Flames of hate - A Zootopian firefighter's story
by Cactus52
Summary: "Hey Houston." Carl waved for his friend to come over. "Yeah?" He responded. "There's a whole lot of ZPD stories here and that's great and all." Carl stated. "And...?" Houston knew that wasn't the end of it. "Where are all the firefighter stories at?" Carl cried out while waving his paws about. Houston raised an eyebrow, "I guess this is one." Carl looked up at the title "Aw yeah!"
1. Rookies

ZPFD - Zootopia Fire Department

 **Rookies**

 **A/N: Look, It was pretty stupid of me to dive head first into this fic without proper planning (I wrote the first parts on Notepad back then! What's wrong with me?)  
**

 **(Hopefully) Needless to say I've improved the writing, the further into the story you go the better it gets, just like a *thinks of some analogy* tomato! Yeah a tomato! You have to pierce the outer layer first! Wait... that's not how it goes.**

 **Crap.**

* * *

"Listen up recruits!" The big elephant boomed loudly through the halls of the ZPFD. The force was enough to make the building creak and groan.

"You may have passed the entrance tests, but your training is far from over!"

Carl had never liked line-ups, yet here he stood, stiff as an icicle dangling from a roof in Tundratown. His grey and black-spotted fur was poofing out of the collar of his shirt. Visibly shaking as the big elephant inspected each and everyone of the new recruits, A Brown bear, two wolves, a horse, a maned wolf and a lynx.

While he wasn't the biggest and fiercest mammal to grace the earth he wasn't small either, he was average, painfully average. Something he'd need to work on if he wished to survive through 'phase two'.

"The district Chief has tasked me with turning you sorry excuses for mammals into the prime firefighters that Zootopia counts on!"

Carl regarded the big elephant pacing back and forth in front of them,

He concluded that he had no chill, he wore the standard ZPFD uniform,

a pair of deep blue slacks with a minimalistic belt, his deep blue shirt tucked into the pants with a golden insignia on his chest that read 'Lieutenant Bosede'.

 ***Ding*** Everyone's ears slightly twitched at the sound that seemed to shock everyone out of their stand-stiff-trance.

Bosede's pocket seemed to be the source of the sound that had broke the silence. The elephant quickly brought out his phone to check the text message he had received, as the Lieutenant read it, his emotion not changing, it was steadily locked into a stare that screamed 'shut up'.

"This is going to be interesting," He huffed, raising his eyebrows and looking down at the recruits,

"You still remember numbers dontcha?" The mammals in question nodded furiously, "I'm going to give you to three to get on this bus…" Bosede gave them a threatening look, the best way to get newbies to listen was to be harsh, that was his motto.

Needless to say, the boarding was done with no extra questions asked.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Those mammals that lived next to the huge radiator in sahara square were lucky, this bus was like that elevated by nine!

Carl had just recently moved away from his parents house in Tundratown at the age of 21, he and his parents had managed to save up for a small apartment in the downtown area, the only place with rent cheap enough for him to be able to buy food as well. He wasn't used to the heat in the downtown area let alone savanna central.

'I really should get a furcut,' He glanced at his uniform, 'did they make these heat-absorbing or something?' He tugged lightly at the collar of his shirt, it didn't help a lot.

'Then I best live till' tomorrow' He chuckled to himself, when all of a sudden a voice had interrupted his planning on wich short-fur look that's trending nowadays.

"H-hey there buddy, heh, uuuh, you excited for training?" the horse that sat next to him said nervously.

Carl didn't even realize that another mammal was sitting next to him, how did he NOT notice the horse that sat next to him?

"Um, I don't know, it's not what I expected, you?" He half-heartedly chuckled.

"I'm terrified! It's no help either that all the other people are being such jerks"

"Why?" Carl asked.

"I don't know, I think it's because i'm the only prey mammal in the group, also i'm kinda scared of preds, y'know, mom raised me that way, I know i shouldn't be afraid but old habits die hard"

"Well, why aren't you afraid of me then?" Carl asked inquisitively.

A small smile started to grow on the horse's muzzle. "Out of all the preds here, you're the least scariest.

Carl could only smile back at this as it wasn't often someone would give him a compliment.

"Is that so?" He chuckled, happily returning to watch out the window when he got a sudden tap on his shoulder.

"Here, you'll probably die if you don't get some water into your system" The horse had offered him a small bottle of water, which he graciously accepted and started to chug.

"I never got your name by the way" The horse asked.

Emptying the last drops of the bottle followed with a large gasp for air Carl turned to his soon-to-be friend.

"My name's Carl White, and you?"

"Oh, my name is Houston Archimedes" Houston fired back at Carl.

"Archimedes? Like that ancient horse-god person thing?" Carl tried to remember as much as he could of his homework in religion.

"Yup, pretty flashy right?" Houston said proudly mockingly holding his head high pretending to be some sort of royalty.

"Damn straight, I can tell this is not going to be as bad as I thought" Carl admitted, his dread of the coming training fading away ever so slightly.

"Where are we going anyway?" Carl turned to look outside, he did not recognize the streets they were passing by, his best guess was that they were somewhere outside the city.

"Were pretty far out…" Houston agreed, "Oh wait, looks like were here!"

"Where?"

"Here!" Houston happily exclaimed, his reward being the sound of his soon-to-be-friend slapping his face with his paw.

Ornate cast-iron gates slid open as the bus approached, driving up towards the center of the field, just outside a looming brick building.

During a live fire exercise the ZPFD's simulation hall had ironically burned down, taking with it the lot of their academy as well. This led to desperate measures, using the ZPD's training equipment, the ZPD understood what had happened and let the ZPFD use their training equipment, but not before mocking them for it in good humour.

As the bus came to a halt, all the fire department's recruits spilled out of the buss and onto the green grass field in front of the main brick building. The sun was out and it was a lovely 28 degrees celsius. (ca 82 degrees fahrenheit)

Lovely weather for the most of them, except for Carl.

He had never had a furcut in his entire life, he didn't need one up until now since he had lived his entire life in Tundratown, only making quick visits to the rainforest district and downtown with his mom. He had never even entered sahara square, for good reason.

As he stood around with the other recruits waiting for Bosede to finish up a report he had started to feel a bit woozy. A faint ringing in his ears and a slight blur in his vision.

Great when do the hallucinations start? He thought to himself sarcastically.

He could make it he reassured himself, he just had to pull through.

He stood there and waited for the Fire Department's Lieutenant Bosede to finally decide it was time to begin.

"LISTEN UP" Bosede boomed as had been the norm. "TODAY I'M GOING TO ENJOY CRUSHING EVERY BIT OF HOPE YOU HAD THAT THE

ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS WOULD BE ENOUGH FOR YOU TO PASS" The ground shook with every vokal he shouted.

"YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES TO CHANGE INTO YOUR TRAINING GEAR" Bosede Quickly eyed all of the recruits that had quickly started to sprint toward the locker room.

Bosede noticed one mammal in particular that caught his eye. Quickly thumping over to the wobbling lynx that was slowly lumbering towards the entrance of the locker room.

Bosede proceeded to tap him lightly on the shoulder with his trunk, raising a brow as the Lynx did not seem to immediately respond.

Carl turned around seemingly looking through Bosede before slowly focusing back at the elephant with a stern look on his face.

"You ok?" Bosede asked harshly.

Carl's mouth was basically what sahara square was, sand.

"Yes sir... Just... a bit warm you know?" Gesturing at his thick pelt.

"I noticed..." Bosede said eyeing the hunched over lynx up and down.

"I'll do just fine" Struggling to give the elephant a small, forced smile

Bosede smirked at Carl's vague attempt to play it off, kneeling down to his level he looked him in the eye. "Prove it."

'Oh shit.' Was all Carl's mind could formulate.

"OUR FIRST DISTRICT TO TACKLE IS SAHARA SQUARE, ON THE DOUBLE"

Carl's eyes widened as he heard the name of that district, Sahara square. From what he heard it was almost too hot for "all-round" mammals there, only those acclimated to the searing heat stood a chance of staying outside more than half an hour at a time, he'd probably melt away the second the training began.

He quickly Zoogled how hot Sahara Square was, average of 37 degrees celsius, almost double what the weather was now, he was done for!

'Here lies Carl White, he died by melting into a puddle on the spot in two seconds flat.' Was all he could think while continuing his unsteady journey towards the locker room.


	2. Trial by fire

**Trial by fire**

 **A/N: Same drill as with chapter 1, rewritten a bit here, adjusted a bit here...**

This is not a hallucination, it's a living nightmare! Carl thought to himself as all recruits had lined up at the start of the sahara square simulation track.

All of the mammals in question stood in a single column with their red tank tops and shorts. They would do this one-by-one, so that Bosede had as much time as possible to criticise everyone.

The maned wolf second in line mumbled something about Bosede, Carl couldn't make out what he said but doubted it was positive.

Carl examined himself, before exiting the locker room he had taken a quick shower. Did it really count as a shower? He had basically tried to cool himself off in any way possible, he was going to need it.

Gazing through his slightly blurred vision he could easily see the large elephant holding his clipboard, timer and that god-awful whistle of his, it was difficult not to notice him, as he stood tall over everyone, only Houston barely reaching his shoulders if he stood on the top of his hooves.

"To pass this course you need to be able to finish it in no more than 5 minutes and thirty seconds" Bosede stated in a serious tone.

"If you fail it you won't be kicked off the team..." Bosede stated quickly after.

"Phew" Carl thought, wiping some imaginary sweat of his brow.

"...You'll be cleaning the toilets for a whole month" Bosede finished.

This was met with the sound of disapproving grunts.

"SHUT IT OR YOU ALL WILL BE CLEANING TOILETS!"

This had the desired effect of getting everyone to shut it. Bosede scanned through the line to see that he had gained their full attention before concluding that they had. He eased back into a less-pissed state.

"First up! Will Stones!" Bosede read on his clipboard.

"Ready, set, GO" As those last words left his mouth the wolf known as Will was off, trying to gain as much distance before the "sandstorm" would blow over.

When you looked at someone else running the course it looked ridiculous, how hard can it be! I can do that much better! Is often what those that spectated thought to himself as the wolf had slowed to a short pace trying to combat the oncoming onslaught of sand and searing hot air.

Nevertheless, Will had pulled through and skipped victoriously with every step back to the rest of the group.

"4.23 Minutes! Try an' beat that Stilts!" Will mocked the maned wolf who only returned it with a face of disappointment.

"If you're gonna insult me because of my appearance at least think before you speak" The maned wolf shot back at the wolf that had walked over to a nearby bench to regain himself.

"Adrian Mane" Bosede rattled forth as he once more returned his look to his clipboard.

"Ready, set, MOVE IT" And with that, "Stilts" was off, running as fast as his odd-looking legs would carry him, almost stumbling over himself.

Once more the "sandstorm" kicked up and it became a battle of endurance. This proved especially though for the Canine (yes they're part of the canine family) as his long, thin legs made sure that every step he took, his paws would sink into the ground more so than any other mammal.

The struggling mammal finally went over the finish line, crawling over it in exhaustion as he took a few ragged breaths, he had not topped the wolf's time, but he had not earned the honor of cleaning toilets.

There was a click, then quick pawsteps, then there was wind, and finally a satisfactory *ding* as each and every mammal started, struggled, and finished.

It was now time for carl to run the track.

"Carl White" Bosede announced, an evil smile showing.

"Show us what ya' got kitty" Will shouted from the bench were the rest of the recruits were ready to watch Carl run the course. Most of the recruits were doubtful if Carl would even make it if he had unlimited time, but one of them rooted for him at least.

"Come on Carl, i know you can do it" Houston said to himself under his breath.

Even if they hadn't known each other for long, Carl was the only one that had even interacted with him, it was mostly Will that had sort-of single pawdedly pushed him out of the group. Carl hadn't been in a group as well, tending to stick to himself.

"I wonder what he's thinking right now" Houston pondered.

"This is the end of me, i didn't even have time to organize my funeral" Carl thought to himself pessimistically.

"Stop whining" Another part of himself said. "When we signed up we knew what we were getting ourselves into, you can't give up just because you think you can't accomplish something"

Carl was starting to fill himself with confidence, something he desperately needed right now.

"Don't you remember what made you sign up?" another part of himself kept asking.

Carl had only been a kitten when the kindergarten that was caring for him stood in flames. Everyone else had already ran out, forgetting to wake Carl during naptime, he was a heavy sleeper and had not been woken up by the fire alarm since the apartment he and his parents had lived in was constantly filled with loud noises and alarms.

He had woken up being alone in a room that was quickly filling with toxic black smoke. He had been in a state of shock and was just sitting there crying, not knowing what to do, until.

He had heard loud steps in the hall, it was a boar smoke diver that had been looking for the last kid that wasn't accounted for on the teacher's list.

Ever since the day he'd been saved from death at the age of five he knew what he was gonna grow up to be.

And he wasn't going to let a few grains of sand tell him otherwise.

"Ready, set, GO" Bosede shouted as he pressed the button on his timer signaling it was time to move...

*Click*

He was off, the only thing the others could see was a gray splotch wearing red sprinting towards what seemed certain death.

Carl was determined to finish the course as a means of shutting Bosede up and taking that infuriating grin off his face. The others didn't believe he could finish it, except one.

Houston sat nervous at the bench watching as his Lynx friend started sprinting towards the enormous fans and radiators.

Carl had one advantage, his paws were quite big, bigger than any of the others (excluding Houston, that bear and Bosede's hooves(and paws)) and that helped him not to get pulled into the sand as had happened to the Maned Wolf.

There was no warning, all of the sudden he was assaulted by a wave of searing heat and sand, in two seconds flat the sweaty sprint had transformed to a battle to stay on two paws and not losing consciousness.

Each and every breath felt like inhaling flaming coal, his eyes were reduced to slits as to not let any grains of sand destroy his eyes. Sand had started to stick to his fur which made everything worse, the water he had doused himself with only amplifying this.

"That's going to be fun to wash off later" Carl frowned inwardly before reminding himself that he had more pressing matters at hand. 3 Minutes left and half the way to go.

Step by step he made his way forward, he had never experienced so many types of pain at the same time, the searing sand under his paws, in his muscles, his eyes, nose, lungs. Every part of his body screamed for him to cut his losses and give up.

But his brain was not responding to any of that, it had, in fact almost completely shut off for maximum concentration, he was a predator and the finish line was his prey.

"Minute and thirty seconds now" Bosede eyed the other recruits that had lazily sat at the bench enjoying the sun and the "entertainment" that was watching a mammal that had spent it's entire life in Tundratown trying to conquer a sandstorm.

"Five bucks says that he won't finish" Will reclined back into the non-existent backrest while eyeing the others that were sitting at the bench as well.

"Five bucks says that he WILL finish" A sound of the aforementioned amount of money could be heard slapped down on the table in front of them. The other recruits, including Will spun around to see a horse with a face that said "I've had enough of your shit"

Will smiled back, revealing his fangs. "You're on"

Thirty seconds, or was it ten? Carl had lost track of time and had resorted to pacing on all fours.

"Twenty more meters and i'll run over and jump into the tundra-town track" He thought to himself, in school he had learned that most mammals were 70% water, for him that would be a lie as he could definitely tell that we was about 7% water at this point.

*Click*

"Looks like you made it on time, you had a whole 3 seconds to spare" Bosed gruffed in a disappointed tone. He was impressed, sure, but he wasn't going to show that to the Lynx.

Carl could hear a loud cheer over from where his friend sat holding two green notes.

"I'm definitely taking a cut of that" Carl chuckled under his breath before rolling over on his back and passing out co- erm, warm.

Houston trotted over to his Feline friend lying at the finish line with a smug smile on his face.

"I knew you could make it, the others didn't think so so i said, nu uh and i bet 5 bucks that you would make it and..." Houston trailed off as he noticed Carl wasn't responding.

Peace. Tranquility. Drowning. WAIT WHAT?

Carl sat straight up headbutting his friend as he did, water ran down his sandy, worn out face as he regained his senses.

"You should get some more water" Houston informed him.

"No i just need another round in the dryer and i'll be fine" Carl replied sarcastically before standing up as straight as he could manage.

Jogging back to the locker room for a well-deserved ice-cold shower, a thought re-appeared in his now not-as-focused-on-not-dying brain.

"I should get a furcut"


	3. The Mall

**ZPFD - Ch 3 The Mall**

 **A/N Captain Obvious here!**

 *** FF (Fire Fighter) is the most basic rank in any fire and rescue organization.**  
 **"Fully competent" meaning they are capable and authorised to respond to emergency calls.**

 ***Captain obvious flies away***

Carl looked at himself in the mirror.

"You promise you won't laugh?" Carl asked his friend that was waiting outside the fitting room.

"No promises," Houston chuckled to himself, not sure what to expect.

A deep breath could be heard from behind the thin walls of the fitting room, and a second later Houston's friend emerged from behind the door with jazz hands.

"Tadaa!" Carl spouted as he waited to see what Houston's reaction would be.

There was silence.

"AHAHAHAHAAAA" Houston's eyes teared up as he saw his friends new furcut.

"You look ridiculous," Houston coughed up in between laughs. "I told you not to go for short trim," Houston calmed down a bit still chuckling only now turning down to face his friend.

"Aww dude, that's the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me!" Carl replied, his expression telling Houston he was not amused.

"But then again, you know what this means right?" Carl looked up with a smug grin. "Hand em' over !"

Grumbling under his breath Houston reluctantly pulled out his wallet to honor his part of the bet, if he didn't laugh for 5 seconds after Carl had revealed himself he would have gotten twenty zoolars.

"It was worth the twenty bucks," The horse thought to himself as he watched his friend grab his new clothes he had bought as well.

"What now?" Carl asked Houston after he had finished grabbing his personal items, of wich there were few.

"Lunch." Houston replied with a flat, almost bored voice.

"Couldn't have said it better myself!" Carl smiled back to his taller friend wo returned his gesture with a noogie.

"Hey, no fair!" Carl yelped.

Once Houston released Carl from the very humiliating noogie, he attempted to jump up at Houston to get at his head, to no avail.

Houston was easily double the size of Carl, this was an upphill battle to say the least.

"How about we call a peace treaty?" Carl suggested, accepting the fact that he wouldn't be able to tackle the horse, for now...

Houston shrugged. "Sure, know any good places for both preds and prey?

The duo looked around the mall they were in, they had just left the clothing store that catered to Felines of varying size, from Ocelots to Lions.

The mall, called fort Lucene was not firing on all cylinders quite yet, most mammals that came here to shop came during lunch hours.

It was a good few hours until that, wich the soon-to-be firefighters thought was really good, both because that meant that they could do whatever ridiculous and childish antics they pleased without having to look both ways. They needed to uphold SOME form of professionalism as they were to be graduated to a fully competent FF* later this day.

"11 months of hell, but we made it," Houston announced proudly as he let out a pleased huff.

"12 for me," Carl huffed "They were low on medium mammal paramedics so i was forced to attend those classes" The Lynx frowned, at first he didn't like the idea of one month extra education, but as time went on he grew to like it, not love it but liked it just enough that it didn't make him want to claw his eyes out.

"Bosede was pretty pissed that he didn't have you to clean toilets for him," Houston chuckled before returning his look to Carl, "To be honest, i think he kind of missed you," Houston finished.

"For real?" Carl said with disbeleif. As far as he knew, Bosede had only been brought to this earth to torment a ceratin someone. "I tought he hated me," Bosede had been reluctant to let a feline into the academy as they had sort of a bad rap when it came to fires, water, ladders, pulver, foam, you name it, there was a reason, yet he accepted Carl.

"I don't think he hates you as much as he hated what you were," Houston said with a hint of sadness, before Carl could react Houston shone up again.

"Look, a sandwich bar," Houston pointed towards the small shop that was indeed a sandwich shop, very observant. "I bet they got bugs and that stuff you like."

"Ew, bugs," Carl said shuddering. How could people EAT bugs? Carl never could wrap his head around why some mammals liked to munch on those creepy-crawlies.

Thats when another smell caught his attention, Fish. Lynxes traditionally didn't eat fish. "But this was zootopia! Where anyone can be anything! Or choose to eat whatever," Carl thought to himself in that overly-cheery tone that all the tourist agencies so often used.

"You don't like bugs?" Houston was confused, he didn't know a single pred that didn't enjoy bugs.

"They got smoked salmon sandwiches!" Carl exclaimed, jumping up and down on the spot while pointing gleefully at the store in question, he was like a child on a sugar rush.

Houston not knowing what had triggered his friend to become so hyper just went with the flow, "I see that, now are we just going to stand here or are we going to order something?"

Both Houston and Carl was in a good mood this day. New furcuts, new clothes, soon becoming the thing that they both had dreamed of since they were a little foal and cub respectively. And the icing on the cake was their delicious meals that they were now waiting for.

"Have you spoken to any of the others in a while?" Carl asked.

"Hmm, no not rea- oh wait yeah, Will," Houston remembered. "He really have turned around in the attitude department since Bosede got sick of his constant barrage of semi-insults," Houston finished.

"I showed that guy who's boss during our first Sahara Square simulation training!" Carl announced proudly, ending it off with a small growl to signify just how much of a boss he was.

Houston held back a chuckle at this as Carl looked ridiculous when he attempted to show off, only adding to how ridiculous it looked was the fact that he had to sit in a booster seat to reach the table.

"Here you go sir," A friendly lioness greeted Houston while placing his mixed garden salad on the table.

"Thank you miss," Houston replied politely, turning his attention to his salad.

"And here's your meal sir," The waitress said as she placed the plate on the table before turning to head back into the kitchen.

If heaven exsisted, this would wait at the gates for me," Carl thought to himself as he sized up his meal.

"Sooo," Houston broke the lynx's food-induced trance. "Why did you want to become a firefighter? I've never bothered to ask since i thought it was obvious, but i'm interested if had some special reason as to why," Houston asked his friend.

Carl thought about the question as he chewed a piece of sandwich. "Hmm, iff wouff saif',"

"Didn't your mother tell you not to speak with food in your mouth? Houston asked nonchalantly.

"Do you want to hear my life story or not?" Carl said in a fake offended tone.

"That's better," Houston replied, "I'm ready, tell me and maybe i'll delete this photo of you in your new furcut BEFORE I send it to everyone I know."

Carl only glared at him for a few seconds before relaxing a bit more and began.

"Hm, it kinda started seventeen years ago, when i was five years old, I was in kindergarten in tundratown, let me tell you"

 **Kinda on a hot streak so expect chapter 4 to be out in 1-2 days. As always constructive critisism is appreciated.**


	4. Memories

**ZPFD - Ch 4 "Memories"**

 **A/N: Someone pointed out to me that ZPFD should be ZFD instead because ZPD stands for Zootopia Police Department. To that i say, yes, i do realize that now, but... ZPFD just sound nicer dosen't it? I think so at least...**

 **I can't thank Venomheart the Dreamer enough, not only have you left a review, (Nice reviews get me higher than crack and lsd combined) but also left me tips on how to improve, where to improve and so on.**

 **Yes, I admit, i spelled Lieutenant wrong.**

 **I noticed I made an error concerning the age of Carl and Houston, i fixed it no worries.**

 ***A watch Manager has the Rank of Lieutenant.**

* * *

 _"Sooo, why did you want to become a firefighter? I've never bothered to ask since I thought it was obvious, but i'm interested if you had some special reason as to why," Houston asked his friend._

 _"Hm, it kinda started seventeen years ago, when i was five years old, I was in kindergarten in tundratown, let me tell you"_

Waking up, Carl rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he stood up.

There was no-one there, all he could remember was that everybody was tucked in for their nap-time, but now it seemed to Carl as if they were pulling a cruel joke on him.

"He-hello?" Carl whimpered out towards the door that was ajar.

As Carl slowly made his way over to the door he could smell something, it reminded him of his dad's failed attempt at baking a sponge cake (google it).

Only this smell was more pungent, the more Carl smelled it the more out of breath he felt. It started aching in his lungs with every breath he took.

Ignoring his natural instinct to retreat back into the nap-room Carl pulled the door open a bit more, enough for him to squeeze through. The smell became stronger and stronger. Now he could see smoke billowing out of the teacher's break-room. It had flooded the ceiling like water would flood into a bucket if you pushed the bucket's edge into the water.

It got hard to breathe, really hard. Before it had been just a slight Ache, now it was like your lungs were being assaulted by a million pinpricks. Coughing loudly and with eyes tearing up Carl ran back into the nap-room and curled himself up in the faraway corner of the room, farthest away from the door.

As the minutes went on he could feel the temperatures inside the room starting to rise, the room was half-filled with smoke, it only be a matter of minutes before the entire room would be engulfed in the toxic, horrid black mass.

Meanwhile outside the kindergarten the teacher had assebmled all the kids that were inside, she was counting them and ticking off their name in her list.

"Where's Carl?" Her expression changed from stern focus to a panicked fear.

Running as fast as her legs would carry her, the teacher, Mrs. Fazio, an elderly badger, sprinted towards the Watch Manager*, the on-site Commander.

"THERE'S A CUB STILL IN THERE!" Mrs. Fazio Shouted with all of her strentgh, wich was surprisingly loud and unexpected from such a sweet-looking elderly mammal.

The Watch Manager turned to face badger, on his firefighter's-tunic a golden badge was pinned, Lituenant Bosede it read.

"Can you tell us were exactly?" The elephant asked with high interest while waving over two other firefighters, smokedivers.

"They were all in the nap-room," Mrs. Fazio pointed it out on the building plan while continuing to speak, "When the stovetop started to catch fire, i think one of the staff must've left it on by accident,"

"I'll send a team in to get that kid don't you worry miss" Bosede's look on his face was one of unbreakable determination.

"Rex! Stoltzman! Get in there and find that kid before the fire does!" Bosede bellowed at the two firefighters, one a deer and the other a hog.

"On it Watch!" They both replied in unison before stepping up their pace towards the entrance to the kindergarten.

Carl had resorted to try and breathe through his shirt as a means to stop the smoke from entering his airways, when this didn't work Carl decided the best plan of action was to yet again crawl up into the corner with a plush and accept the inevitable.

That's when he heard loud pawsteps outside the door, there were a few muffled words before the door was kicked up completely, knocking it off it's hinges smashing into the floor with a violent, ear-piercing wham.

Carl froze in fear as the two masked mammals approached him, with slow, laboured breathing. His brain had decided it was time to go into power-save as Carl remained in a curled up ball.

He felt something plastic against his muzzle, he took a breath, air, delicous air. His muscles relaxed a bit and then he finally dozed off.

"Woah," Was all that Houston could manage to say.

"Yeah, and since that day when I almost died, only to be rescued by firefighters I knew what I was going to grow up to be.

Houston had finished his saldad, while Carl was only about halfway done with his smoked salmon sandwich.

"Your turn," Carl told Houston.

"My turn?" Houston pointed his hoof at himself.

"It's only fair, i told you my life story, tell yours" Carl informed the Horse in front of him, looking at him with a serious expression.

"I was uh, well not the nicest person when I was young, you see, I was a..." Houston trailed off.

"You were a what?" Carl asked again, growing slightly impatient.

"I was a pyromaniac okay?" Houston blurted out. "I liked to set stuff on fire, it started with small things such as crumpled papers, then trash bins, and then I..." Houston paused for a moment, he kept looking down at the same spot on the table. "I accidentaly burned someone's house down when i was 14," a small sob could be heard from Houston.

Taking a small break Houston then continued.

"I got arrested for arson and to go trough months of therapy and even more community service, during those months of community service i helped people who had lost their homes, I felt responsible for what they were suffering through,"

Houston went to rub his eyes and took a sip out of his drink.

All Carl could do was gape, tounge lolled out. He didn't expect THAT from Houston.

"Dude I didn't..." Carl was interrupted by Houston holding up his hoof signaling him to stop.

"There's more, after I got out of therapy and Community service i felt so bad for those who had lost their homes, since that day i've sworn to stop the things I once started."

Houston had finished, "Oh and also, I had to pay a LOT of cash, I'm still paying off some of those fines to this day, and I'm 22 years old now! I was 14 back then!"

Carl hopped off his booster seat and onto the table, extending his paw and placing it on Houston's shoulder.

He took a deep breath.

"Well, if that was your goal, mission accomplished." Carl felt proud for his friend that seemed to have suffered through a lot.

"Hey! We are jsut about to become firefighters! That only like, half the mission!" Houston shot at him with a now more happy tone.

Carl picked up his phone, glancing at the clock.

"Speaking of becoming firefighters, we need to go, like now!" Carl tugged at his friends shirt while slapping two twenties on the table.

"How long do we have?" Houston asked as the two were sprinting towards the ZPFD HQ.

"Ten minutes!" Carl replied back.

 _Ten minutes til' graduation._


	5. Graduation

**ZPFD - Ch 5 "Graduation"**

 **A/N: So in my first draft of this chapter I went on a lengthy explaination about the ranks and that stuff, I scrapped this idea as it felt incredibly out of place. I'll try to work it into this chapter and the next but in a more organic way than spouting out facts.**

 **Keep up the support, it really does keep me motivated to write these.**

 **Also, this one SHOULD be more polished than my previous chapters since I spellchecked it, probably, hopefully.**

 ***The Scramble is the badge that you receive once you become a firefighter.**

* * *

5 minutes left on the clock, Houston and Carl barged down the corridor of the ZPFD's headquarters, slamming the door to the lockerroom wide open.

Luckily for them, no-one was present. He could hear Bosede downstairs talking in the fire engine hall.

With adrenaline pumping they both slid into their ZPFD parade uniform, Carl glanced at himself in the mirror, a pair of navy blue slacks with a light blue shirt with the standard black tie to go with it. A red patch was sown onto the right side sleeve, the ZPFD's Insignia. A simple black fireaxe bordered with a golden thread, underneath the fireaxe in deep red letters it read "ZPFD".

Carl glanced at his left sleeve, it was clear that something was supposed to be there, instead it was just a small patch of velcro. He didn't have time to think it over as he was literally picked up off the floor and carried on Houston's shoulder.

"You don't have time to admire yourself in the mirror." Houston said as they were once again barged down the corridor, only difference being that they now looked like proper firefighters.

Houston finally put Carl down that had only now started to regain his bearings.

"I see you actually gave a crap about traditions," a loud grumble could be heard behind the two. "You're lucky I'm in a good mood today." Bosede sighed before motioning towards the fire engines below them in the garage.

Not wanting to say anything to piss off the elephant further the duo ran down the staircase in silence. Everybody else from the academy and some others were waiting in three of the fire engines, the large engine, the medium engine and the medium aerial apparatus. They had left the large aerial apparatus and the only medium HAZMAT apparatus.

All of the fire engines were cleaned and polished to perfection, even dashboard that was often left unattended.

As Carl and Houston walked over to the side of the hall were the medium engine sat parked a certain wolf greeted them.

"Glad you could make it in time!" the wolf, Will, told them happily.

"Hey Will, man you changed, you were kind of a pain in the butt before." Carl said to Will while climbing up the steep steps that extends when the door opens.

"Yeah, turns out being an asshole to everyone kinda backfired," Will nervously laughed while also climbing up the steps to take his seat. Houston snorted in amusement seeing the smaller mammal climbing the steps before taking a single stride to get into the vehicle.

Closing the door the steps retracted in underneath the door. Houston spun his head around to look at the mammals inside. In the back were he sat there were Carl and Will, in the driver's seat sat a hyena they had never seen before.

The hyena must have noticed Houston staring and had decided to introduce himself. "Hi y'all, I'm Kenneth Birch! I'm gonna' be your crew manager once ya' graduate!" Kenneth announced happily.

Only now did Houston notice that on the hyena's right sleeve was a black patch with "CM" sown into it with white thread.

Next to the driver was a maned wolf called Adrian Mane.

"Hello." Adrian said briefly before quickly occupying himself with looking out the window.

Houston was just about to inform Carl that the maned wolf up front had offended him when the fire engine roared to life, opening the garage doors sunlight streamed into the garage.

One after the other the fire engines slid out of their respective garage door and formed a small convoy heading towards a park located in the center of savannah central that was creatively named "Central park".

The fire engines drove through the gate for vehicles and lined them up on the grassy field in the middle.

As Carl exited the fire engine he felt the sun against his back, now that he had shortened his coat considerably it suddenly felt a lot nicer to be out in the sun on hot days like this. "I could get used to this."

Other than the three fire engines lined up in the park there was a small wooden stage and a couple of lines of foldable chairs. It was not a lot, but it didn't matter.

"I hope my parent will be here." Carl thought anxiously, he started to scan the park for a pair of lynxes, when he couldn't find any he shrugged off his uneasiness and started making his way over to the front row of foldable chairs.

"The ceremony will begin in about ten minutes," Bosede announced to everyone that was present. This unnerved Carl even more, Bosede was smiling! And not his usual evil grin, but a genuine, happy smile.

"Something's up," Carl whispered to Houston that was sitting next to him. "I've never seen Bosede this happy for us being successful," Carl finished while straightening out his uniform.

"Maybe he's just happy because he dosen't have to train us and therefor not deal with us anymore," Houston joked.

"I'm telling you, he-," Carl quieted down as a few mammals started to arrive, most of them seemed like family members to the ones graduating.

"Carl!" a voice could be heard from the back of the froup of arriving mammals.

"Mom?" Carl shouted both surprised and happy. He started running towards the source of the voice, that's when he could make out his mother and father that were heading towards him. He ran up to them and gave them both a warm embrace.

"I've missed you! Training there was horrible," Carl told his parents after he had let go of them and they had let go of him.

Only then did he realize that they had just been staring at him with mouth agape.

"What?" Carl was confused. "Is something wrong?"

That's when both of his parents burst out into laughter.

"You look adorable sweetheart!" His mom tried to calm herself down, but it was impossible, he looked too adorable to not laugh at.

"Yeah I get that reaction a lot," Carl said dryly. "It really helps me out around here though." Carl explained.

"Oh, who's this?" Carl turned around at what his mom had pointed at to see Houston walking over.

"He's my friend, I met him when we both started training," He waved his friend over. "Hey Houston, come meet the rest of the White family!"

"Nice to meet you Mr and Mrs White, I'm Houston Archimedes" Houston said politely.

"No need to be so formal Houston," Mr. White informed. "Call me Sam."

"And I'm Rose." Rose said, looking up to be able to meet the eyes of the horse.

"Well then, nice to meet you both," Houston said glancing his watch. "But I think it's time we get going."

Carl and Houston hurried over to get back into their seats. It was just in the nick of time as an otter stepped up on stage, but not just any otter, it was the brigade manager himself! Using the booster steps the otter made his way up onto the podium.

"We as firefighters risk our lives for others, not because we expect something in return, because it's the right thing to do. I have been a firefighter for as long as i remember, I've had colleauges that cannot remember that, because their lives were lost in the line of duty saving those who couldn't save themselves.

Firefighters save more than homes, we save hearts memories and dreams.

Remember that next time duty calls."

As the brigade Manager stepped down from the podium and walked away only one thing was present inside Carl's head, Pride.

"Alright people let's step it up, get up here!" Bosede shouted towards the soon-to-be firefighters that sat and daydreamed in their chairs. This shook them out of their trance and then one after one they walked up onto the stage.

Lined up, shoudler to shoulder facing the "crowd" Bosede now received a small box of some sort. He took a deep breath before turning around with a humble and proud look on his face.

It had been a solid eleven months of hell to get here, but it was always worth it when he saw the look on their faces as each and everyone of the recruits received their Scramble* and FF patch.

"Welcome to zootopia's bravest, firefighters" Bosede exclaimed as he stepped back to regard all of the brand new rookies.

"What now?" Carl said trying to hide his childish glee.

"Now?" Bosede asked, his trademark evil grin returning. "Blast em' boys!"

There was no warning, only a beam of high powered water as all of the rookies were bombarded with water from the two fire engines.

"THE HELL?" Carl freaked out as he examined his now drenched parade uniform.

"Were just keeping up with the traditions." Bosede said and let out a small laugh, A LAUGH! This must be the first time Bosede had ever shown another emotion besides pissed off.

Carl turned his head to see how the other rookies had fared, all of them had been floored by the high-powered water shot right at them. Carl then turned to see the Brigade Manager chuckling as well. "Just great, and I thought only I and Houston were childish" Carl thought as he stood up.

"Alright rookies," Bosede now said in a more relaxed tone. "Once you return to the station you are off-duty, go grab your key to your rooms and make yourselves at home, we'll walk you through the daily routines now that you're a real firefighter, dismissed." Bosede started to march off to the higher-ups to have some important conversation with them.

"This day can't get any worse." Carl was about to conclude when he heard Rose shout. "We got it all on camera!"

"Of course."


	6. Downtime

ZPFD - Ch 6 Downtime

 **A/N: I'll talk some once you're finished.**

* * *

"So what now?" Houston turned to Carl as they headed back towards the ZPFD HQ, their parade uniforms drenched in water from the "tradition" that was to drench every new firefighter to the bone.

"I don't know, I'm feeling kinda tired now," Carl replied.

"Oh," Houston sounded let-down at hearing this.

"Chin up big guy, let's go get our keys."

After Carl and Houston had recovered from the trauma of being bombarded by a high pressure fire engine Carl had begged his mom not to post the video on furbook, of course, she didn't agree.

"At least you're not going to be the laughing stock of the family." Carl dramatically announced, Houston started to chuckle at this.

"You're such a drama queen."

The two mammals arrive and enter the station, the weird looks they got from other mammals passing by was starting to bother Carl just a tiny bit.

They made their way to the front desk, it was filled with paperwork, old mugs, new mugs, leftovers, the desk was like a time capsule from a couple of weeks ago. A polar bear sat at the desk with her head buried in paperwork, furiously scribbling away.

Houston looked down at Carl before gently knocking on the small part of the desk that wasn't occupied by paperwork, mugs etc.

"He-hello?" The polar bear asked as she stood up to look over the stacks of work that was blocking her view.

"Um, yes hello I'm Houston and this is my friend Carl, were here to get our gear and the keys and all that." Houston motioned towards Carl that the polar bear behind the desk coudln't see.

The polar bear had to walk around the desk to see Carl, he wasn't short, but he wasn't too tall either, this desk however was huge.

"I'm the station manager, my name is Carla." Carla reached out a paw to shake Houston's and Carl's paw one at the time. Her patch's letters read "SM", she wore the normal outfit of the ZPFD, navy blue slacks with a navy blue shirt tucked into them held together by a simple belt, adorning her chest was a golden badge depicting two crossed bugles, underneath them "Captain Carla" was engraved.

Only now when she shook their hands did she notice that they were soaked, she let out a small chuckle.

"I see you've gone through the ceremony, don't take to heart, we'll find a way to get back at Bosede someday." Carla went back behind her desk and opened a drawer.

She got out two keycards and two keys. "Don't lose them" she told them in a serious tone before easing back again.

"I don't know about you but I don't want to stay in this soaked suit any longer then I have to." Carl said to Houston before heading for the stairs to the second floor.

"Hey! wait up!" Houston shouted as he headed after Carl up the stairs.

On the second floor of the ZPFD they had their break room slash kitchen, gym, bathrooms and "cubes" as the firefighters dubbed the small rooms that they got assigned.

"It's a bit smaller then the apartment I have now," Carl began. "But it'll work."

When Carl had started his training at the ZPFD he (with some help from his parents) had rented a small apartment in Savannah Central, he didn't have a car so living with his parents in Tundratown during his education was out of the the question. Now that he had another place to stay he planned on moving out of his old apartment. He had nothing in it besides clothes, he had only used it for sleeping, he pretty much still lived at home, as was common for lynxes.

And frankly, the apartment was a bit too expensive for him and his parents anyway, he didn't make nearly enough as a firefighter to afford an appartment in the middle of Savannah Central.

The rooms were pretty much the same, only in different sizes. There was a bed, a locker, a chair and an AC. The wallpaper was a bland red, as were the sheets, pillowcase and quilt. The locker had a polished metal finish and the chair was one of those cheap plastic ones.

After removing his scramble and patches he tossed his wet uniform onto the chair before grabbing a towel out of the locker. Closing his door and heading towards the showers. Today had been quite the day, waking up, nearly getting run over by a crazy mammal, the mall, Houston's confession, the graduation, everything.

Heading into the men's bathroom he let out a sigh, no one inside. Carl just wanted some peace and quiet to gather his thoughts, he didn't have the time to do that until now.

Tossing his towel onto one of the benches he stepped into a shower and turned the dials.

"GAAAH!" Carl shouted in surprise as the water that came out of the shower head was hot, too hot, he checked the temperature dial. "Har har, very funny" Carl could imagine the smartass that thought it was soooo funny to leave the temperature on fifty degrees Celcius.

Turning the temperature down to thirty the water became much more pleasurable, it was still hot, but sweating was no issue if you're already in the shower.

Taking a good thirty minutes before getting out Carl now felt relaxed and almost fell asleep standing. Carl slowly waddled back to his "cube".  
Fumbling with his key to the door he eventually got his door open, he managed to close the door before passing out face-first in his bed.

The last thing that enters Carl's thoughts before he fades away is a something he remembered from his graduation, a quote from the Brigade Manager.

 _"Firefighters save more than homes, we save hearts memories and dreams."_

* * *

 **A/N: Don't worry, we'll get to some action soon! They just have to be eased into a sense of security first.**

 **If anyone have an idea of where i should take this story just send it, I don't really know where i'll take the story other than that Carl and Houston will hang out and put out fires. Put a bit of family in there? Some drama?**

 **We'll see. _*writes "Traumatic experience" into notebook*_**


	7. No smoke without fire

**ZPFD - Chapter 7 There's no smoke without fire**

"Ugh," a muffled moan was the first thing that left Carl's muzzle as he sat up in his bed. He rolled over to check the clock, 6:50, he had woken up ten minutes too early.

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes Carl lazily put on his uniform before opening his door, walking out from his "cube". Looking down the corridor there was no-one there, he started to head towards the bathrooms at the start of the hall, a throw away from the break room.

After brushing his fur and splashing his face for a few minutes he left the bathroom heading towards the kitchen, eyes on some breakfast.

The kitchen was not too huge for Carl, painted in a warm yellow hue coupled with red brickwork it gave the kitchen a quaint look and feel. Looking out the window the sun was nowhere to be seen, because all Carl could see was the ZPFD's backup-garage on the other side of the road.

Heading over to the fridge and opening it, Carl was flooded with choices of what to have for breakfast, he went for the breakfast that he always had, yoghurt and müsli. Preparing his meal he also put on some coffee, filling the the water-tank to max. _"I'm a good guy, I'll brew coffee for everyone,"_ Carl thought as he took his bowl and mug over to the table and sat down.

"Yes dad, I know you're sorry, yeah, uh-huh, love you too dad, say hello to mom for me, bye!"

 ***Click***

Houston woke up and sat up straight, last night when he saw Carl waddle into his bedroom he came to the conclusion that he should get some sleep as well. Waking up his dad had called him, they were sorry that they couldn't be there to witness his graduation. It didn't matter to Houston, he was actually kind of glad that they weren't there, the situation would probably end up the same as it did for Carl and his family.

Standing up and stretching for a good five minutes Houston glanced at his clock, 6:59, not wanting to wait in his room for the alarm clock to go off he pulled the plug on the infernal device that otherwise would blare the same one tone until he managed to lift a hoof to shut it off.

Opening his door and stepping out he looked down the corridor before taking a single step across the corridor and knocking on Carl's door, no answer. He felt the handle, it was unlocked. Taking a quick glance inside Houston concluded that Carl was not present. He shut the door after him and headed down the corridor towards the kitchen, ah, there he was.

Sipping his coffee slowly gaining his energy Carl watched the morning news, the current story was about how biscuits were made.

"Morning," Houston said as he went over to the fridge, digging out a bowl of greens. "How long have you been awake?" Houston asked, no banter yet, it was too early and both their brains were still partially on stand-by.

"Got up at 6:50, I made some coffee for everyone if you want some. Carl waved a paw lazily in the direction of the coffee brewer. "If you want some."

"Yes please," Houston stepped over to the brewer. "Are you trying to impress the higher ups or something?" Houston teased.

"Why of course, I'm always there to kiss up to my boss!" Carl replied back in a overly cheery tone dripping with sarcasm.

"When do we get our assignments?" Houston asked, sitting down next to Carl.

"When Bosede decides it's time to get up," Carl quipped. "Which would be right around now." Carl checked his watch which told him the time was 7:00.

One moment there was silence, the other a few dozen alarm clocks began their out of sync-symphony together. One after the other the blaring alarms were silenced.

"I can get used to that, but it will always be just as funny." Carl wheezed, looking up at Houston that had just about the same expression. They could hear the doors down the corridor open followed by slow pawsteps that grew louder.

The station was laid out so that larger mammals such as rhinos, hippos and elephants had their beds, bathroom, gym, kitchen etc. downstairs. On the second floor the smaller mammals had their beds and so on. The garage of the station took up about two thirds of the total space. The second floor rooms closest to the inside had internal windows that overlooked the engine hall. And of course, there was the fabled slide bar that led from the break room upstairs to the changing room downstairs where their bunker gear was hanging.

A multitude of mammals made their way into the kitchen where they promptly lined up to nab their favorite food for breakfast. Some of them Carl and Houston recognized such as Will, a wolf that had been a jerk in the past but now seemed to have put that behind him. Adrian, a maned wolf that wasn't too talkative, they knew him from graduation but didn't bother to speak to him as he didn't speak to them either. Kenneth,a hyena that was going to be their crew manager that they had met just yesterday. And finally Captain Carla, a polar bear that Carl and Houston didn't know too much about since the only interaction between the three of them had been a short, polite conversation when they had received their keys to their rooms.

Carl noticed Kenneth looking around before shining up when he locked his eyes onto him. He quickly nodded to Will that followed the hyena over as the two of them sat down in front of Carl and Houston.

"Morning guys, you excited?" Kenneth asked the lynx and the horse as he gave them a big smile revealing his fangs which made Houston shift in his seat a small bit.

"Yeah, I'm pretty excited, after all, this have been my dream since I was a cub." Carl said smiling back at the happy-go-lucky hyena.

After about half an hour of conversation regarding their expectations as to what they will be doing and Kenneth telling them stories of calls he'd been to the station's announcement system crackled to life, bringing with it the voice of a certain elephant.

"All new firefighters are to report to the briefing room immediately with their respective superior."

"We should get going now," Kenneth barked happily as he put his dishes into the dishwasher with everyone following suit. "The longer you wait, the harder he gets to deal with, trust me I know." Kenneth told them ending it with a small chuckle as they chose the fastest way down, the sliding bar.

Opening the door to the briefing room the group entered, it looked more or less like a classroom from high school, only that instead of a professor in the front teaching about math and all that boring stuff it was a grumpy elephant.

"Take a seat everyone, we have some details to go through." Bosede announced as the rest of the recruits filled into the briefing room.

Everyone looked at each other and Bosede in confusion, before all of them turned their attention to the elephant in the room when he let out a quick cough.

"In case there's a call we can't have any confusion slowing us down, therefore you'll all be assigned a number and a vehicle," Bosede motioned for the crew managers to step forward. "Crew manager Kenneth Birch, you and your crew are assigned to fire pump FP-0101." Kenneth lit up giving a salute. "Thank you sir!"

Bosede rolled his eyes at this gesture before pointing at the second crew manager who was a ram. "Crew Manager Gustaf Cloverfield, you and your crew are assigned to aerial apparatus AE-0101." The ram only gave a small nod at this before Bosede motioned to them to get back to their seats.

"Listen up, I'm only going to tell you this once!" Bosede looked over all the mammals present making sure that all eyes were on him before continuing.

"We here are the ZPFD HQ are full time firefighters that are expected to be out and about 90 seconds after we received a call. Hence the designation 01 "city center", our vehicles are designed to be able to traverse in any of the twelve districts, that's also why the mayor passed a law letting us utilize diesel and petrol."

 _During the past forty years the zootopian comitteé of transport noticed that the heavy use of petrol and diesel in cars led to severe damage to the health of all residents in zootopia. As a result a law was passed stating that only emergency responders and construction companies seeking permission are allowed to use diesel and petrol-fueled cars and trucks._

Bosede carried on. "Every district also has a volunteer fire department that can provide backup during especially demanding situations, however I wouldn't count on them as they usually take about twenty minutes to arrive on scene."

Flipping through some papers Bosede occasionally looked up to make sure that no one fell asleep during this briefing.

"Now, shifts, you'll be alternating between night shift and day shift, but seeing as you're all full time firefighters you'll be expected to provide backup if the firefighters on shift are all occupied and so on." Bosede mumbled something about being back in kindergarten before looking up. "Any questions?"

A hoof shot up.

"Yes?" Bosede inquired.

"When do we get to get out of this room?" It was houston that thought it was a good idea to attempt to joke with the elephant.

Bosede raised his eyebrows, looked down at his watch and sighed, "Now."

"Alright here she is, ain't she just the most beautiful fire engine in the world?" Kenneth said lovingly drinking in every detail of the fire engine that he now would have the honors to drive.

"This guy seems a little weird." Carl whispered to Houston.

"I'm pretty sure he laughs at himself in the mirror as well, y'know, hyena stuff and all that." Houston whispered back.

That's when Kenneth came back from around the truck with a huge cardboard box labeled "compact designs".

"Let's see here," Kenneth said as he tried to pick at the thick tape that sealed the box. He glanced up at his crew that were all giving him curious looks. "Carl could you assist me?" Kenneth pointed towards Carl's paw and back at the tape.

Not saying a word Carl stepped forward and knelt down next to the box, extending a single claw as he began sliding it across the tape that went in a straight line on top.

"Thank you," Kenneth patted him on the back as he went over to stand next to Houston again.

With slight shuffles the box finally opened revealing it's precious cargo, brand new F1 firefighting helmets, Kenneth brought up a small list before checking the numbers on the front of the helmets.

"Aight' let's see here," the hyena focused on the list intently before leaning back from his hunched over position. "So this one's mine," the hyena pulled out one of the brand new helmets, the smell of brand new print mixed with kevlar and plastic that had just left the factory dominated the air. The hyena's helmet was a bright yellow with a slim, black line running horizontally in the middle, signifying his rank as the crew manager. "Aaaaand this one's for Adrian," Kenneth took a quick glance at his list before taking another yellow helmet out of the box, this one without any black stripe. And so it went on until everyone had gotten their own personal helmet, fitted for their size and species, it was only Carl's helmet left.

"This one's yours," Kenneth said giving Carl a proud smile as he handed carl his yellow helmet, this one was different from the others in that on both sides of the helmet was a white circle with a red cross inside.

"This is also yours," Kenneth said as he handed carl a small pouch, inside it was a new patch, a glowing white background with the words EMT sown into it with blood-red thread.

Carl was at a loss for words, he swallowed before asking. "Why?"

Kenneth regarded him with a confused look before looking down into his list. "It says here you went through an extra medical course, so you're a qualified emergency medical technician.

Carl felt pretty stupid for not remembering the extra courses he had to go through, he looked around to try and get some help from his friend to escape the embarrassing situation, but just like everyone else he was busy fidgeting with his helmet, trying to discover all of it's nifty features.

"Oh yeah, heh, just joking with you! I knew that all along!" Carl tried to play it off cool.

"It's okay we all forget sometimes," Kenneth chuckled as he flipped his papers over to a new page. "Now we need to go through some daily routines.

"Alright," Carl said as he spun his helmet round and round taking in every detail of it, it would not stay in this condition for long, best enjoy it while I still can. "What needs doing?"

Kenneth read his papers before tossing them onto a bench. "We'll need to check that our vehicle has all of the equipment it needs and that nothing is broken.

" _Alright, that isn't too bad of a first task, It's better than toilet duty."_ Carl thought as he followed Kenneth that had started to wave everyone in their crew over.

 ***Click***

"911, what's your emergency?" A kind but serious deer asked the caller.

"Smoke, 1453 Acacia road, don't worry the fire department is on it's way officer." The doe assured the voice coming from the headset.

* **Click***

 **A/N: It seems like Carl and his group will face their first fire soon, not a bad start to their first day at work.**


	8. Action!

***SCBA = Self Contained Breathing Apparatus consists of an air tank and a mask allowing firefighters to breathe when there's smoke and/or chemicals.**

 ***PASS = Personal Alert Safety System is a small box that is basically a motion sensor, in case a fireman is knocked out and stops moving the PASS device will alert nearby firefighters after thirty seconds of not registering movement.**

 **I'll keep em' coming don'tcha worry bout' a thing.**

* * *

* **BEEP* BEEP* *BEEP***

The piercing sound of the station's PA system dominated the room and silenced everyone.

A robotic female voice began speaking. "Structure fire, Downtown zootopia, rescue required, calling unit FP-zero-one-zero-one, FP-zero-one-zero-two, LA-zero-one-zero-one, IM-zero-one-zero-one, ninety seconds."

Carl as well as the rest of engine company 1 looked between each other before Kenneth shouted.

"Get your gear on let's go!" And with that everyone was scrambling towards their turnout gear that was neatly sorted in a doorless locker.

"Just like the training." Carl assured himself as he slid into his bunker pants, then his steel toed reinforced boots. Carl enjoyed the feeling of boots, most mammals preferred to walk without anything covering their paws, hooves and so on, but it was required seeing as their often entering burning buildings, assisted mammals in car wrecks and so on.

After the suspenders were adjusted Carl reached in and grabbed his nomex hood, fur easily catched fire, and even though Carl had shortened his coat considerably protecting every inch of one's body was essential.

From inside the locker carl could see something glowing back at him, the reflexive strips of his bunker coat. Bringing it out it was completely new, you could see that on the fact that there were no marks or damage on it whatsoever, turning it around to regard the back the letters ZPFD were displayed in all their glory. Underneath that was his name "C. White".

"Sixty seconds." The announcer well, announced to all the firefighters that were busy gearing up.

Just below Carl's shoulders was yet again his name and another three letters, "EMT". Carl had forgot that he had been qualified to be an emergency medical technician but was proud to be one all the same.

With his coat on he slapped his helmet on top of his head, grabbed his SCBA* and jogged towards his seat aboard the fire engine known as FP-0101. Well inside Carl had strapped on his SCBA allowing his mask to hang from its straps around his neck as he inspected his helmet once more. Yellow, red cross on each side, his name up front and back along with his number, three.

"Thirty seconds."

"You look fabulous in that outfit, where did you buy it?" Houston joked as he sat down on the left side of the truck, leaving an empty space in the middle for Will.

"These? They're homemade, and they're not for sale!" Carl played along.

*Slam* The driver's seat door slammed shut and a familiar face greeted them.

"Let's see how ya manage first time with the real deal." Kenneth said, emphasis on real.

"It'll be a milk run, no biggie!" Houston boasted, eager to show what he learned during those grueling eleven months.

"I'm with him on that one." Carl interjected.

"Who's with anyone?" The head of a certain wolf popped up from behind the floor of the truck, at level with Carl's boots.

"Glad you managed to arrive on time." Kenneth informed the wolf as he climbed up the steps and took a seat in the middle of the vehicle.

*Slam* Another mammal sat himself down on the passenger's side.

"Let's do this." The maned wolf said gently in a soft tone, almost whispering before cracking a smile while looking back at Carl, Houston and Will.

"HE SMILED LOOK! SOMEONE GET THE CAMERA!" Houston laughed out loud with everyone else following suit.

At that moment the garage doors for the vehicles opened while orange, flashing lights filled the garage and somewhat emanated outwards the street.

"Buckle up gentlemammals," Kenneth told them with enthusiasm. "This is gonna be a bumpy ride!"

The diesel engine started with a roar, vibrating everything around it, the power the fire engine exuded was amazing. The truck started to pick up speed leaving the garage.

Carl felt unstoppable.

Arriving on scene Kenneth stopped the fire engine and everyone flooded out. They were greeted by a tiger in uniform.

"Do you have any extra information on what we're up against, officer?" Kenneth asked politely but with a hint of urgency in his tone.

The tiger took a deep breath before explaining. "Me and officer Wolford were following a suspect that is believed to be a supporter of Dawn Bellwether's group against predators, what's left of it anyway. Wolford charged in while I radioed for backup, all I heard was an explosion and then rubble collapsed the entrance."

"And from the looks of it there's fire too." Carl pointed towards the rising stack of smoke originating from the house.

Putting on his game face Kenneth started issuing orders to his crew.

"Adrian, we need an extra water supply!" Kenneth shouted as he pointed towards the fire hydrant that was located at the end of the road.

"On it!" Adrian shouted for perhaps the first time ever.

"Houston! Fix us a way up to the second floor!" Kenneth pointed towards Houston that was already on his merry way towards the ladders.

"Will! Carl!, you two will be entering at the second floor and attempt to rescue the officer that is trapped in there." Kenneth looked between the two firefighters standing there listening intently at his orders. "Rescuing that mammal is number one priority! Will! You'll man the nozzle with Carl following right behind!"

The three of them heard a loud crack coming from the house, spinning around to look at what was causing the noise they found Houston had slammed the serrated digs into the wood wall of the house, securing the ladder in place.

Carl and Will started running towards the fire engine, Will getting a hose and nozzle and Carl opening a storage compartment and taking a Boston rake and fireman's axe.

With the fireman's axe securely attached to his back Carl climbed up the ladder that had been supplied to them by their fellow firefighter horse.

"Don't die on me in there! You still owe me money!" Houston joked as he watched his lynx friend climbing up the ladder.

"Hey! So do you!" Carl fired back.

"Hello! Can we keep this professional? There's plenty of time for banter AFTER we save this guy!" Will scolded them while dragging the heavy hose up the ladder.

Snapping back into it both Carl and Houston realized the danger of the situation, there was someone in there, they are going to die unless we do something.

"Hey dumbass! Turn on the water will ya?" Carl had found a loophole, they could batner if they also kept it work related.

"Sure thing dumbass number two!" Houston joked back while turning the valve on the truck, watching as the grey hose went from being flat to filling up and becoming nice and round, indicating that they were good to go.

Rolling his eyes at this Will waited for Carl to smash the window the ladder had been set up underneath. With a determined jab the window gave way, forming into a million pieces scattering against the floor inside.

Smoke, black, poisonous fog flowed out of the window.

"Get your SCBA on!" They heard their crackling radios say, Kenneth's voice coming through.

With two quick spins of the valves on his back and a press of a button on his mask the life-giving air flowed from his two yellow tanks on his back and right into his muzzle whenever he sucked a breath in.

"One-oh-one-dash-three and one-oh-one-dash-five moving into the building, PASS-devices* active." Carl announced through his radio with a serious tone.

"Solid copy, clear to move in." Kenneth's voice feeded through as Carl swung his legs over the edge, landing square with his boots on the second floor. It was dark, the smoke seemingly absorbing any light that managed to come into the building. Night vision wouldn't help against smoke.

Carl turned around and assisted Will in pulling the heavy, water-filled hose into the building.

"The smoke seems to be originating from underneath us." Carl informed Will that was taking point.

Crawling forward on all fours they avoided the thickest of the smoke. The stairs were right across from the room they had entered, which seemed to have been a bedroom turned makeshift lab.

Carl poked his wolf colleague, which he only knew was a wolf because he had seen him without the the turnout gear before the call, they were completely indistinguishable in their gear because it hid all the features of the mammal, except size, Carl was a bit smaller than the wolf.

"Did you see the equipment that was in there?" Carl asked Will in a raised tone.

"Yeah, radio it in." Will suggested, which Carl promptly did.

"Unit one-oh-one-dash-three to crew manager." Carl released the button on his radio awaiting an answer.

But the one who answered was not Kenneth, it was Bosede. "This is watch manager Bosede, go ahead."

Begrudgingly Carl answered, even though he knew Bosede was a good guy just like him the memories of training still left a sour taste in his mouth.

"We have reasons to believe we're dealing with dangerous chemicals here, me and Will have spotted a lab of some sort."

Carl sucked in another breath as he followed the trail that Will had left after himself, it was pretty easy to follow considering the trail was a hose with the diameter of a soda can.

Another crackle, then Bosede's voice again, this time sounding infuriated, Carl couldn't decide if he was pissed at Carl or at the person who's lab it was.

"Understood, HAZMAT unit on the way, you better not be wrong, rookie."

Carl gulped, that elephant had the power to make anyone nervous, even over the smallest of things.

The further down the hall they descended the thicker the smoke became and the darker it became. Carl checked his gauge, about twenty minutes of air left, it wasn't much but he had to be confident, they had to be close by now.

As they turned a corner they felt a wave of heat pushing towards them, it was most notable around their masks, which were not as fire resistant as the rest of their gear. They scanned what was left of the entrance hall, furniture strewn around shredded to pieces along with parts of the wall, floor and ceiling. The rubble was blocking the entrance door and iron bars had been mounted on all the windows downstairs.

"Whoever lived here did NOT want anyone to get in." Carl thought as their flashlights fixed on something that stuck out from under a thrown-over couch, a paw.

Taking a quick glance at each other, Will slammed the lever on the nozzle forward into max pressure, releasing copious amounts of water. While Will was suppressing the flames, keeping them at bay, Carl was crawling on all fours across the floor that was littered with glass shards, wood splinters and other rubble.

Once Carl made his way to the couch he mustered all his strength and flipped the couch over, revealing a unconscious wolf sprawled out bleeding heavily.

"Keep the water coming! I'm pulling him out!" Carl yelled towards Will as he locked his arms around the wolf underneath the arms.

Even though they hadn't been doing anything too physically demanding they felt very fatigued because of the extreme heat. The SCBA also made it harder to breathe.

Managing to pull the unconscious wolf far enough away from the blaze Carl sat him up and proceeded to lift him into a fireman's carry. The much bigger and heavier wolf definitely made it harder the smaller lynx's back, but that didn't faze him.

In an adrenaline-induced rush Carl radioed in. "I'm coming out! We found someone!" Fighting up the stairs all the rush was starting to fade, his muscles protested at the abuse they were taking, but Carl's mind was set in stone. He wasn't going to give up.

Making his way back to the room were they entered Carl tightened his grip on the wolf, taking a deep breath before lifting his left leg up and over the edge of the window, emerging back into sunlight.

"I'm Chuck Chestnut and this is znn news reporting live, a fire has broken out in downtown zootopia, the reason as of why is still unknown." A squirrel dressed in a snazzy suit announced towards the camera. "We have the fire department on scene currently performing their duty."

"The caller, officer Delgato of the ZPD reports that his partner officer Tim Wolford is still inside!" The news reporter standing on a ledge to compensate for his size turned around to the tiger in question. "Tell us, how long have you known Wolford for?"

The tiger looking down at the ground, attempting to maintain his cool, he glanced upwards, taking a deep breath before speaking. "I've known him since the academy, we've always been friends and-" Delgato was interrupted when a spectator pointed towards the open window and shouting.

"Look, someone's coming out!" Delgato turned around and looked up seeing the firefighter carrying the bit larger wolf on his shoulders.

"Hey! We're not done with the interview!" The squirrel shouted at the officer that was now running towards his hero.

"Thank you! I thought i'd never see him again!" Delgato looked down at the figure in front of him, unable to recognize what type of mammal he was seeing as protective turnout gear covered him from head to toe.

Sitting on the curb, Carl watched as the doors of the ambulance slammed shut and drove off, sirens wailing. He had saved a life. Looking at his paws, protected by the thick, fire-proof gloves Carl couldn't stop thinking about it, his mind was empty yet buzzing with activity, thinking about everything and nothing at the same time.

He had saved a life.

He looked at his friend Houston, rolling up hoses while chatting with Will, smiling.

He looked at Kenneth, talking to Bosede, smiling, he seemed like he was getting commended.

He looked at Adrian, sitting on the passenger side, smiling, he was satisfied.

Then finally, Carl looked over to the far right were a police cruiser was parked, he both saw and heard Delgato telling a story to a Bunny and a Fox, waving his arms around in wide gestures.

Delgato quickly glanced towards Carl in all his glory, sitting on a curb, mask off, helmet to the side, covered in soot and debris, before turning back and seemingly whispering something to the other officers, who quickly shot a glance his way. The bunny seemed to stare right into him.

Carl simply just sat there, still trying to process everything.

He saved a life.

This was everything he dreamed of doing.

He was a hero.

* * *

 **A/N: Aaaah, the obligatory Judy and Nick reference. (I think)**

 **Carl and Houston are starting to get along with their friends in ther crew, let's see where this leads next.**

 **Also! I'm doing a poll, I want to get some reader feedback and you can help decide where to take the story next.**


	9. The Hospital

**ZPFD - Ch 9 The Hospital**

"Oi Carl," Kenneth tapped Carl lightly on the shoulder from where he was rolling hoses.

"I'm all ears, what's up?" Carl replied, still tending to his chore.

"Bosede wants to talk to you in private," Kenneth began. "I don't know why, he wouldn't tell me."

Carl let out a sigh, what could he have done to piss off the lieutenant this time?

"It would seem like officer Delgato and Wolford would like to meet you in person, Carl" Bosede informed Carl, in a monotone voice.

"So what am I supposed to do?" Carl asked the elephant in the room.

Bosede looked down at Carl, then at his computer on his desk, both enormous in comparison to Carl.

"You're going to go over there and meet Wolford, you'll see what you'll do when you're there.

Carl just looked at Bosede with a blank expression, not getting the point.

"Carl, look, have you read the news?" Bosede spun around his computer screen, which was about the size of a small cinema-screen. There was an article published by znn, "Boys in red saves boys in blue! The new heroes of Zootopia?" the article read, along with a picture of Carl in full gear carrying the unconscious wolf on his shoulders.

"The brigade manager contacted the Chief of police, he thought that we could "strengthen the bond between mammals working as emergency responders". Bosede made air quotes. So I had to spare one of my firefighters, ideally the one that saved Wolford was requested." Bosede gave Carl an amused smile before continuing. "I'm glad to not have to deal with you for a while." Bosede finished.

"The feeling's mutual." Carl quipped back. "What now?"

"You will return to your normal duties, i'll meet with you here tomorrow."

Carl shrugged and jumped off the over-sized chair, walking out of Bosede's office.

" _That's got to be expensive"_ Carl thought, even though larger mammals got financial compensation for their size it wasn't nearly enough.

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"I saw Bosede taking you into his office after our first call, what did you do this time?" Houston joked as he took another bite out of his salad.

"Nothing much, I'm supposed to hang out with that guy I saved, to improve relations or something, yeesh." Carl said, eyes looking deep into his mug of coffee.

"That's sounds like some serious punishment." Houston said sarcastically.

"I just hope it isn't for long, i'll miss your stupid jokes." Carl smiled, looking up from his contemplations.

Houston looked deep in thought before suddenly shining up.

"Caaaaaaaaaaan i?" His grin widening.

Carl looked around himself and Houston, no elephant in sight. Nodding at the excited horse he confirmed it.

"Sure, I'm sure to get all kinds of flak for this, but hell, he can't fire the rookie hero." Carl said.

"I'm sure he can he just-" Houston was interrupted by Carl flailing his paws towards Houston's face.

"Stop being such a bummer!" Carl said in a faked angry voice.

They both looked at each other.

"We're so immature, how did we even get this job?" Houston said flatly.

"Beats me." Simple as that.

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"Good morning rookie," Bosede started. "I'd ask-" He stopped as he noticed Houston peeking from outside the door. Swinging it open in one large motion Houston was revealed, standing there, attempting to eavesdrop on the two mammals.

"H-hi boss," Houston chuckled nervously. "I was just passing by, i'll get on my-"

Bosede grabbed hold of the collar on Houston's shirt, dragging him in and slapping him down on the seat next to Carl.

"Now, If you'd care to explain," Bosede rumbled threateningly, if you could hear anger the noise would be deafening. "Why you're eavesdropping on private conversations."

Houston winced at this, sitting still as stone in his seat. Eyes forward staring into a point in the wall.

"I'd like to go with Carl to the hospital, to meet the mammal he saved." Houston squeaked, a feat thought to be impossible.

Bosede stared at the horse menacingly, then at Carl, then back to Houston, before giving up, letting out a small sigh as he leaned back in his chair.

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As the two exited Bosede's office they could hear him muttering something about "One less to deal with." Shrugging it off as Bosede being, well, Bosede, the two of them skipped away happily.

"A whole day off!" Carl jumped up, giving houston a high five? (paw?) (hoof?).

"Yeah! And for what? Meeting some guy and talking for a while?" Houston leaned down and picked Carl up, placing him on his shoulder.

Feeling a sudden panic at being lifted up Carl flailed his limbs around in an effort to regain balance.

"Hey! You're pretty light!" Houston informed Carl.

"You could have warned me! I almost got a heart attack!" Carl scolded Houston, failing to keep his mad expression, which soon eased into a satisfied smile.

Walking down the hall on the first floor where Bosede's office was located, they went up to the desk in the entrance, where Captain Carla, a polar bear, greeted them.

"Hi guys! Where are you going?" Carla asked, taking a second to glance at them. She was usually busy with filling in forms and approvals that had been mailed to the ZPFD.

"Morning Captain! Were going on a super secret mission!" Houston noted with a childish tone.

"Yeah! Like Jack Savage in that movie!" Carl pointed towards Houston.

Carla rolled her eyes, groaning at this, she'd only known the new recruits for a while, but immediately knew these two were going to be the station's clowns, at least during their spare time.

It was annoying, but they were kind of amusing to watch, like a live sitcom episode.

"Har har," She paused her paperwork and turned her full attention towards the horse and the lynx sitting on his shoulder. "Real reason guys?"

Carl pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Carla. Carla put on her reading glasses, which were essential when handling paperwork from smaller mammals. Carl found it amusing when larger mammals (preferably Bosede) filed paperwork that was as small as their thumb. He looked at his own paws, then at Houston's hooves. _"That's a question i'll ask later"_ Carl thought as he continued to watch the polar bear sift through the paper.

"It says here that Houston got a temporary leave, duration one day." Carla read as Houston and Carl looked at each other, wondering what they would do with their spare time.

Carla read on. "And here it says Carl is on paid leave for an… undisclosed period of time."

Carl's mouth hand agape. The shock hit him so hard he nearly fell of Houston's shoulders.

"What!?" He stared at Carla with a shocked expression. Jumping off Houston's shoulder and landing on top of the desk he sifted through the papers as well, he hadn't read any of it, all he got from Bosede was "Hand these to Carla." in his usual gruff voice.

"I don't know, but it also says you're supposed to be on time." Carla gave them a smug smile and tapped her wrist as to emphasise the point.

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"Well we made it to the hospital entrance on time!" Carl huffed as he stood up straight again. Running through morning traffic was not advisable.

Houston raised his hoof and was about to say something witty by the look on his face when he just let out a huge sigh and stood up straight. They turned their head to look at the mammals in the reception, all staring at them with wide eyes.

"What?" Carl shouted, that was enough for the onlookers to return to their own business.

The two of them hobbled up to the reception were a friendly beaver greeted them.

"Hello! Welcome to Savannah Central Hospital, How can I help you?" The beaver greeted them.

"We're here to see officer Wolford, I'm that guy on the news that saved him from that fire y'know?" Carl pointed his thumb towards himself.

"Let's see here…" The beaver clicked through files on her computer, that was what they could hear anyway. "Name?"

"Carl Matthew White," Carl began. "Firefighter at the ZPFD." He finished.

A few more clicks. "Ah here it is, Chief Bogo along with brigade manager Richard have left a note for you as well."

With confused look they took the tiny slip of paper and headed for the elevator.

"What does the paper say?" Houston asked, curious as to what the otter they had seen giving a speech at their graduation,

"Stay positive and don't mess up." Carl said trying to hold back his laughter.

"That one's pretty cheesy." Houston nodded in confirmation. "What does the police chief's say?"

Folding out the piece of paper it read. "I'll have an eye on you, don't mess up."

"Yeesh, way to make a paper note sound mildly threatening." Carl added.

Houston then cracked up. "I wonder how long it took him to write it down."

Carl, confused, turned to look up at his friend before asking. "Why?"

Houston rolled his eyes before bending down and kneeling to reach Carl's level. "He's a water buffalo."

Carl's mind took a second to process this newly gained data before cracking into a smile. A picture of a water buffalo writing with a tiny pen on what must have seemed to be a postage stamp was now forever burned into his mind.

He wrinkled his brows and inspected the note more carefully. "Hey! this couldn't have been written by a buffalo! Look!" When Houston inspected the note as well he noticed the fine level of detail in which the letter were written, hand written.

"Maybe he got someone else to do it for him?" Houston theorised.

Carl shrugged it off and shoved the notes deep into his navy-blue slacks. They continued walking down the corridor, the white walls and smell of antiseptic solutions brought back memories, his father was a doctor at the small clinic in Tundra Town. He had been there often as a cub, helping his dad when he was working late.

Carl looked up to read the numbers on the doors, stopping as he saw the right number pop up.

"Forty Five, this is the place." Carl nodded at his friend to follow as Carl opened the doors. Stepping inside they were greeted by a tiger that was sitting next to a bed in which a wolf was sitting up in, attached to heart monitors and a breathing apparatus on hold just in case.

"There he is! That's the mammal that saved you!" The tiger, known as Delgato, pointed out to the wolf that barely held his eyes up.

"Hey! I'm just doing my job!" Carl scratched the back of his head while looking down at his feet.

The wolf waved him over, leaning over Carl heard him start talking. "You saved my life, thank you." His voice was weak and hoarse, smoke was both poisonous and wreaked havoc on any mammal's lungs.

"Don't worry about it." Carl shrugged it off.

"And you must be Houston!" Delgato stood up and greeted the horse. Shaking his hooves vigorously.

"Yeah, that's me." Houston confirmed, Delgato finally releasing his grip as Houston had started to get dizzy.

"Ok, now," Carl shuffled some papers that he had gotten from Bosede. "It says here I got a special assignment, what's my special assignment?" Carl looked around as if searching for an answer.

Delgato looked at wolford who nodded for Delgato to go ahead.

"You're going to take care of Wolford until he recovers." Delgato stated bluntly.

"What?!" Carl shot up, arms flailing around wildly.

"When the mayor saw the news about you saving officer wolford here, he thought it would be an excellent idea if you helped him around until he got better, positive media and all that?"

Carl stood in horror, first day on the job and THIS happens? Then he let out a small sigh, looking at the wolf sitting up in the hospital bed.

"I guess I have no choice." Carl shrugged.

"Would you mind joining us for lunch later?" Asked Delgato. "I have to get back on shift with another officer until Wolford here gets better."

Carl looked at Houston, mentally asking for advice. All he got in answer was a smug smile and a thumbs up.

"I'll take that as a yes."

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"Don't worry Ms. Tailers, I'll bring him back in one piece." The lynx assured the beaver as he rolled out of the hospital with Wolford in a wheelchair.

Heading down the street to the diner that they had settled on, buggaburger.

"Ugh, I hate bugs." Carl thought out loud as they walked down the sunbathed streets of savannah central.

"You think so? Really?" Wolford asked in disbelief.

"I just think they're creepy and crawly and-" Carl shuddered.

They went inside, noticing two police cruisers parked outside.

"I thought we were only meeting Delgato?" Carl questioned.

"Yeah, and why here? Their salad here is terrible!" Houston interjected having been silent during the stroll from the hospital and the "restaurant" if you could call it that.

"I've had colleagues get by on the salad they got here." Wolford told them.

As they entered the saw Delgato waving from a booth, it was pretty hard to miss seeing as he was the second-largest mammal inside, only Houston was taller.

As they made their way over they saw that two other mammals were sitting next to Delgato on booster seats.

"Hey! I'm Judy Hopps, You must be that firefighter that Delgato's been stirring about!"

* * *

 **A/N: I honestly have no idea where i'm taking this story, although I know it will be divided for a while, with Carl taking care of Wolford for the mayor's political points and Houston probably annoying Bosede and getting to know the rest of the crew a bit more.**

 **Also let me know if Judy and Nick should stay in the story or nah, the reason I started a story with OCs was because I wasn't (still ain't) confident enough that I could write Nick and Judy.**

 **PS. There will be more firefighting in the future. Pinkie promise.**


	10. Burgers

**A/N: Wohoo! Double digits! Aight'! Let's see what happens next! (Well, you'll see. I have to write it first and post it and- eh, you get the idea, still as fun to write as to read.)**

ZPFD Chapter 10 "Buggaburger"

* * *

"So I was running along with this giant ladder in my hooves." Houston built up the suspense. "Before, WHAPOW! I smacked it right into the wall, holding it tight!" Houston used his hooves in large sweeping motions to exaggerate the action.

The buggaburger they had decided to eat at was an okay choice, Carl didn't like bugs but luckily enough they had a fish menu as well.

"That's where I can join in with my point of view!" Carl decided to get in on the story as well, not letting Houston steal all the glory.

The group turned to face Carl as he started to tell his part of the story.

"As Houston was saying I climbed up the ladder he helpfully provided," He gave a wink to Houston who snorted at the gesture. "When I climbed up with Will behind me I smashed the window open, glass flew everywhere and then we climbed inside."

Carl proceeded to tell about how he and Will had made their way down the stairs, fighting through extreme heat and smoke to get to Wolford, that had laid unconscious in the entrance hall.

A few moments had passed after Carl had finished when Judy chimed in.

"Me and Nick here arrived just in time to see you! Delgato wouldn't stop telling us about it, How we had missed it all." She looked up at the tiger who scratched the back off his neck.

"I may have overreacted a bit." Delgato chuckled, looking away from the group.

"A bit?!" Carl laughed. "You almost squeezed me to death when I was finished with CPR and stopping his bleeding!" Carl scolded the tiger in a playful manner.

This resulted in everyone at the table bursting out into laughter, drawing some weird looks from other customers.

"So," Judy started after the laughter had died down. "What made two you want to become a firefighter?" She asked happily.

"Well for me it was because when I was just a cub I looked up at firefighter and saw them as heroes, larger than life." Carl answered. "And other jobs such as office worker seemed so boring, I want to do something physical!"

Judy turned to face the horse, awaiting his answer.

"Because my parents told me not to." He chuckled. Judy looked over at Carl, who was giving Houston a questioning look. She knew that wasn't the full extent to it, but decided to hold back her police urges to investigate every detail. It could wait.

Carl leaned back in his seat, the fish here wasn't great but it wasn't the worst thing ever, that thought gave him flashbacks to the time he had the worst fish ever. He shuddered.

Ever since that incident he double-checked what was inside every meal.

His thoughts shifted from inadequately cooked seafood to questions about the fire.

"I only know half the story here," Carl began, everyone at the table turned to look at him. "Me and Houston just answered to a call about a fire with a rescue required, we don't know the reason why, do you?" Carl asked, he had remembered that after he and the crew had loaded up and was about to head back some police officers remained, among them were a fox and a bunny.

Judy frowned at the question. "It's classified for now."

"Damn," Carl muttered.

"Classified like in the Jack Savage movies?" Houston joked.

"You like Jack Savage movies?" A smile grew on Judy's face.

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"Okay! See you guys then!" Judy shouted as Carl, Wolford and Houston were heading back towards Savannah Central Hospital.

"She seems nice." Houston said happily.

"I think she's a bit overly optimistic and jumpy, just like you, and aggressive too, did you see how she punched that fox?" Carl asked.

"Heh, that's just how Judy and Nick get along." Wolford interjected.

"I suppose so, what now?" Carl sighed.

"Well apparently i'm in good enough condition to leave the hospital without a wheelchair tomorrow, but still nowhere near ready for work." Wolford noted.

"Sounds good, hospital it is then." Carl nodded as they picked up their pace a bit.

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"There is a guest room you could stay in that's next to Mr. Wolford's room." The helpful beaver informed them.

"Well, see you in a while then." Houston said with a small sigh. He didn't know what he'd do without the slightly annoying lynx at his side.

"It won't be that long of a while, stop being so dramatic." Carl told his friend.

"Being dramatic is in my blood!" Houston said as he slapped a hoof over his forehead, theatre style.

Carl simply rolled his eyes at this and rolled Wolford towards the elevator. The last thing he saw Houston doing was performing his best impression of Bosede.

"So, Mr. Wolford, how did you manage to get hurt this bad?" Carl asked, bored by the cheery jingle of the elevator.

"It's officer Wolford, but you can call me Tim, and that's still classified." Carl muttered at this, stupid cops and all their classified and restricted files.

"Look, if I was the one in charge i'd tell you all about it. If it's any kind of relief to you I don't know what happened exactly at that house."

Carl let out a sigh and shrugged. "Fine." Fine? It wasn't Fine. He wanted to know. He _needed_ to know.

"Curiosity killed the cat." Carl muttered, a proverb his mother had taught him. Some things are not meant for you to know.

"Huh?" Wolford asked, having zoned out for a moment.

"It's nothing, we're here now." Carl said, attempting to lift his mood up again.

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"They seemed nice." Judy said happily as she drove their cruiser down the street.

"Eh, I see why you liked them." Nick replied.

"Oh please," Judy rolled her eyes. "It's not only because that horse liked Jack Savage too."

"Then what is it?"

"They remind me of us two."

"Because of their size difference or because they seemed like they enjoyed to watch each other suffer?" Nick quipped, resulting in his arm getting a well placed punch.

"The latter." She chuckled.

* * *

 **A/N: The best part of writing these are to end them on a good line. Also, sorry for the short chapter, the next one will be a bit longer and will center around a certain horse and hyena.**

 **(Action will be included, bragging rights will be issued, Bosede will be triggered.)**


	11. Houston's Chapter

**ZPFD - Ch 11 "Houston's Chapter"**

 **A/N: Houston finally got some time in the spotlight! More Nick and Judy cameos! Hooray!**

* * *

 ***BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP***

"You heard the tune! Let's dance boys!" Kenneth tossed his newspaper aside, shouting out for his crew to listen up.

"There's been a vehicle crash at Central avenue, multiple mammals trapped, No signs of extreme emergency, Dispatching FA-oh-one-oh-one." Carla's voice rang out across the station. "Kenneth! get your sorry excuse for firefighters going already!"

Houston looked at his salad with sorrow in his eyes. He whispered "I will always remember you…" much like people would whisper at a funeral. The clock was 8:00, prime time for breakfast, but also prime time for vehicle accidents apparently.

"Food can wait, let's go !" Kenneth snapped the horse out of his trance. Ushering him towards the slide bar.

Sliding down and gearing up the crew get into their respective spots, just like they've trained. Even though this was Houston's second call he didn't feel too worried. The first call had gone great, granted he didn't have to do much.

With a click of the keys in the ignition the beast roared to life. Shaking the air around it.

"Can I dr-" Houston was interrupted by Kenneth answering his question before he could finish.

"No." Kenneth stated flatly, before easing into a smile. "Maybe some other day when you got more experience."

Grumbling over this Houston shut his door and they were off. Even though he didn't get to drive it felt amazing to ride in the big engine. Getting awed looks from everyone they passed, this was every young mammals dream.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Aw crap." Kenneth slowed the truck to a stop and got out.

"What?" Will asked, curious of what had gotten the happy-go-lucky hyena down so fast.

The wolf didn't get an answer, instead the hyena motioned for them to step outside.

"Aw crap." Will stared out over the scene, cars laid scattered across the streets like toys at a kindergarten, and in the center was the thing that had caused it, or at least what remained of what had caused it.

A truck, what was left of it anyways. It had been a bomb.

"My guess is that it was some sort of bomb or something volatile." Houston noted.

"Good guess smartass." Kenneth sighed.

"Alright, fan out, let's do a size-up of the damage we got here, Houston and Adrian will take the east side, Will and I will take the west side."

After a brief moment of "Yes", "okay" and "Uh huh" the group spread out to measure the damage.

Walking through the carnage Houston noticed that most cars were empty, the doors were open with warning lights flashing. He looked forward, a gathering of mammals could be seen, as he got closer he could hear faint yelps.

When Houston got closer the group moved aside, revealing a car with a terrified puma inside, the car had been turned to the side, with the body of the car horribly mangled. As Houston closed the distance he could see the fear in the puma's eyes fade a bit.

"Don't worry miss, we're trained professionals, i'll get the hydraulic tools." Houston assured the frightened mammal.

"Oh-okay." She squeaked out, forcing a small smile.

Houston smiled warmly back, he knew how it felt, to be afraid like that, his mother had raised him very protectively, warning him of the "dangers of predators". This had made him very afraid of predators during his youth. Instead he turned to other things to busy himself with. Fire was one such thing he'd play with. Fire wasn't scary, fire was fun! Watching things burn was like an experiment, to see what would happen. What would happen if a house got set on fire?

Shaking out of the trip down memory lane, a place he did NOT want to revisit, at least not yet, he picked up his radio and informed with a stern and official voice.

"I've got one mammal trapped in a sedan, I'm getting the hydraulic cutter."

"Okay, we got nothing on this side yet, most mammals seem to have left their cars."

Houston nodded at this even though Kenneth couldn't see him nod.

Opening one of the many compartments on the fire engine Houston spotted the right tool for the job, the Portable hydraulic cutter, the benefit of being one of the bigger species of mammals was that he could carry the portable hydraulic tools, including the cutter, smaller mammals would have to use the tool that was connected to the truck via a thick cable.

Strapping the generator on his back, Houston got up and made his way back to the sedan with the trapped puma. The air smelled of metal, oil and leaking batteries, good thing he wore heavy-duty boots over his hooves, he didn't like the feeling of hoofwear but could appreciate the protective abilities it offered.

"Ma'am, I need you to get as far back as you can." Houston informed the puma while Adrian helped Houston to breathe life into the portable generator.

 ***VROOM*** The generator on Houston's back spluttered to life and fell into a rhythmic two-stroke humming. He had mixed feeling about strapping a petrol engine to his back, having read about earlier cars exploding horribly, the ones that used petrol. Not that battery-driven cars were spotless, but they had a cleaner rap-sheet, for now.

The mammals that had grouped together to comfort the trapped mammal recoiled at the sound of the engine tearing through the otherwise quiet street.

 ***BZZT* *BZZT*** The clippers opened and closed almost as fast as a sloth could high five.

"Visor down." Adrian reminded Houston.

"Thanks." He looked back at the maned wolf, giving him a quick nod before looking back at the task at hand. The windows had already been smashed, so that was about twenty five percent of his job already done for him.

Opening the cutter wide, Houston placed the cutter at the edge of the roof.

 ***Click*** The cutters slowly closed on the roof of the car, twisting and turning the metal, bending it until it gave up and parted. Slowly, inch by inch the roof opened up.

"Right, there we are." Houston said while extending a hoof to the mammal trapped inside.

She took his hand, now smiling.

"Thank you." Was all she could manage to say then and there.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

It had been three hours since they arrived, in the meantime Savannah Central Volunteer Fire Department, several ambulances and two ZPD detectives had arrived. And worst of all, the media.

Luckily Houston didn't have to answer any questions, he was safe behind his make-believe barrier of ZPD tape.

He'd saved that puma from her car, and the rest had found three others, a young buck, an elderly wolf and a grizzly bear that had driven a school bus, luckily the young mammals had escaped without any injuries.

"Well, there's nothing more to save, most cars are too damaged to repair." Adrian shrugged, having spoken to the salvage team.

"Off to the junkyard with it, let's hope that terrorist attacks were included in their insurance." Houston joked, but frowned again, now was not the time for jokes apparently.

Houston sat in his seat in the engine, not wearing his bunker coat, it got too warm with it on. He was thinking about his lynx friend and what he was up to. That was until a small voice pulled him back to earth.

"Are you a real firefighter?" A small bear cub asked Houston. He looked down and noticed the entire school bus had congregated around him, staring at him with expectant eyes.

"As real as they come!" Houston smiled while he jumped down from his high seat in the truck, the young mammals didn't even as much as flinch.

"Now which of you would like to try on my helmet?" Houston looked out over the small army of children. He then looked over to Kenneth, who gave him an approving thumbs up.

Will decided to chime in as well, kneeling down next to Houston, offering to answer any questions the curious little mammals had until the replacement school bus arrived.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"And that's what we use this mask for!" Houston concluded his short lecture about the SCBA system and all its nifty features. The school bus had arrived and honked for the children to climb aboard. Houston and Will waved goodbye and once the school bus had driven out of sight they turned to Kenneth.

"How'd we do?" Will asked happily, his voice muffled by the mask he was wearing.

The hyena gave them a smile. "That was awesome, were you a kindergarten teacher before you joined or something?" Kenneth asked Houston, intrigued over how well he spoke with the kids, taking the time to listen and answering all the questions they had.

"That's what half a year of community service will do to you." Houston answered light hearted.

"Community service? Howd' you-" Will's question was shot down.

"Don't want to talk about how." Houston replied, his tone still happy but with a slight tone of regret. He wasn't going hear the end of this now was he?

"Well i'd say keep this up and you're on your way to get a spot on Bosede's Not-a-dumbass list!"

"Glad to see he's got some humour at least." Said Houston.

Kenneth rolled his eyes. "He's pretty nice once you get past the initial first month or so."

A month! Well, it's not like he cared too much what that grumpy elephant thought about him, but that grumpy elephant also decided who got the worst chores back at the station…

Houston concluded that being on that elephant's Not-a-dumbass list was a good thing.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Can we leave now, it's been four hours, i'm going to literally starve if we wait here any longer." Houston pleaded, saving lives was one thing, but now he had to save his own life. The drama was too real with this one.

"We just need to tell the ZPD investigators what we saw, if it's any help I got this grape I found underneath the seat." Kenneth smiled and presented the "grape" to Houston.

"That's more like, a raisin man." Will helpfully noted to Houston who waved the excuse for a grape away from his face.

"I'm not hungry anymore." Houston sighed in a exhausted manner.

"Problem solved." Kenneth let out a laugh. Which earned him a snort from Adrian that was sitting next to him.

Houston heard knocking on the door he sat at, looking out he didn't see anyone, that was until he opened the door and was greeted by two familiar faces.

"Oh hey! It's you guys again!" Houston shot up at this happy surprise.

"Yeah hey." Nick waved it off dismissively. This was no time for a happy meetup.

"Hello! Yes we would like to know what you saw when you arrived, if you saw anything at all." Judy sounded optimistic. Houston tried to remember if he saw anything out of the ordinary, well, it was relative, he had walked around what seemed like a disaster movie scene, that wasn't exactly ordinary.

He frowned. "Sorry, I haven't seen anything special except for this whole situation." Trying to end it on a positive note, humour.

"Oh okay," Judy looked down at her hind paws, deep in thought, before looking up again, eyes wide. "What did the truck that exploded look like?"

Houston tried to remember back to when he first saw the truck when they arrived. The salvage team had long removed it.

"From what I could tell there was no-one sitting in it when we arrived, it was a pretty medium sized truck, definitely big enough for me to sit comfortably in. That's all I could gather from it, I didn't exactly arrive the moment it exploded." Houston shrugged while looking at Judy who was holding out her carrot pen.

She scribbled a few notes in a notepad with Nick looking over her shoulder. She looked back up at Houston before looking at Will sitting at the other end of the truck.

"Did you see anything extra?" She was hoping for a yes, but this seemed like a dead end.

"Naw, Houston here basically summed it up perfectly." Will gave them a friendly half-smile.

"Okay, well," Judy was a bit disappointed in what she'd found, she was hoping for something a bit more conclusive. "Thank you anyway."

"No problem, see you on sunday right?" Houston pointed towards the two of them.

"Yeah, 16:00, Downtown cinema." Judy reminded herself before spinning around and walking back towards their cruiser.

"See you then too! Nick was it?"

"Yeah," Nick pointed towards him and clicked with his mouth, shades still on. "We'll see you then."

Houston muffled a laugh until the two of them were out of earshot.

"That guy was, uh, special." Will remarked.

"Says you." Adrian commented from his front seat.

"We should organize birthday parties at the firestation!" Houston came up with the idea seemingly from nowhere.

"Heh, good luck trying to convince Bosede of that." Kenneth barked, starting the truck into electrical-mode, diesel was to be saved for emergencies.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"I will give you one chance at this, do NOT screw that up."

"Thanks Lieutenant" Houston galloped out of Bosede's office.

Bosede leaned back in his seat, grumbling as he re-read the newspaper once again.

"A LIGHT IN THE DARK, FIREFIGHTER CONSOLES CHILDREN AFTER TRAUMATIC TRAFFIC ACCIDENT." The newspaper showed multiple pictures of Will and Houston playing with the children, showing them the equipment and tools.

"I hope this works out."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Heh, looks like your friend got some time in the spotlight as well." Wolford chuckled before showing Carl the online article of Houston and Will playing with the children.

"Damn, I've got some catching up to do."

* * *

 **A/N:** **Still keeping mah schedule!**


	12. Early Morning Pancakes

**A/N: I love the smell of half-baked fanfiction in the middle of the night! I'm back after my one week vacation, a lot less money in my pockets and some irritating sunburn on my left shoulder.**

 **Without further ado, Chapter twelve in the epic saga of Carl White and his unfortunate situations that he gets put through, all for your entertainment!**

* * *

"So, what now?" Wolford asked Carl.

"I need to circle around back to the station and get a change of clothes I think." Carl answered while motioning down towards his uniform that looked a bit worse for wear.

They had woken up very early, the sun still being in sort of a reverse sunset for lack of better words. Savannah Central was pretty cool at this time of day, the sun did a lot to heat up this district. They looked around, there was almost no-one present, the exceptions being a few late nocturnal mammals and a few early risers, such as himself.

"Eh, can't we get some food first? I wouldn't feed that hospital food to crickets on a farm!" Wolford suggested, the few bites they had got tasted like cardboard puré.

Carl's stomach grumbled as if his unconscious agreed. Letting out a big sigh he conceded, his clothes situation could wait.

"Sure, what do you have in mind?" Carl asked while looking at the different restaurants.

"I was thinking pancakes or something like that." Wolford pointed towards a small establishment at the end of the road, just at the corner of a four-way intersection.

"Sure, anything that can wash the cardboard out of my mouth will do." Carl joked while starting to walk across the street.

oooooo

"What can I do for ya' today?" The cheery waiter asked the wolf and lynx.

Cal sighed and looked down at the menu, nothing seemed all that good, he closed his menu and looked down at the rabbit waiting to take his order.

"I'll have a double espresso and plain pancakes." He forced a smile, keeping in mind not to show too much of his teeth, even though most prey understood that preds didn't mean anything by this gesture, some still felt uncomfortable at the sight. _'Maybe it's an old reflex?'_

The rabbit quickly tapped away on his tablet before turning his attention to the other customer.

"And you?" He asked.

"Can I have a plain black cup of coffee and the beetle-supreme pancakes?" Wolford replied while looking up from his menu, he had sat a good few minutes, shifting between 'oh' and 'ah'.

"Sure thing, it'll be a couple minutes." The rabbit tapped away on his tablet before walking over to another table that seated a pig and a boar.

"So, that article about Houston." Carl questioned in an attempt to start a conversation to break the silence. It was almost unnaturally quiet, the only thing you could hear was cars passing by on occasion and the chefs moving around inside the kitchen.

"What about it?" Wolford looked at Carl while searching for the article on his phone.

"Does it say what caused the accident or anything like that?" Carl asked while leaning over to look at Wolford's phone.

"It says that based off what callers reported, firefighters reported and detectives reported it seems to have been an explosion of some sort, it came from a white truck." Wolford said while spinning around his phone so that Carl would stop half-standing on the table.

"That's ominous." Carl noted, his ears perking when he heard the rabbit waiter return with a small trolley with their food on it.

"Thanks." They both said in unison as they received their food.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"So, how long have you been a police officer?" Carl asked as they made their way back towards the ZPFD's headquarters.

"Two years now," Wolford replied. "This job is way better than my first."

"Well, what did you work as before then?" Carl asked curiously.

"Nah, it's dumb." Wolford waved the question off.

"Aw c'mon, you can't leave me hanging like that!" Carl pleaded, "It can't be worse than mine."

"I'll tell ya my worst job and you'll tell me your worst job, deal?" Wolford offered.

"Sounds like a deal to me." Carl shrugged. Now curious as to what the officer would consider a 'worst job'.

"I was a sewer technician." He stated bluntly and let out a sigh, ready for the barrage of laughter, but none came.

"You call that bad? My eighteen year old self would gladly have exchanged jobs with you." Carl replied. Before Wolford could ask what could possibly be worse than constructing pipe inside of sewers Carl told him.

"I was a swim-teacher, teaching five year olds how to swim." Carl dramatically announced, as if remembering the horrible moment or realization that his younger self had gone through.

"What's so bad about that?" Wolford raised an eyebrow at the statement.

Carl took a deep breath before facing the wolf. "One, they were kinda sorta scared to death of me, two, I had a really thick coat back then which leads into three, I almost drowned on my first day on the job, I survived by getting CPR from a hippo." Carl closed his eyes and shuddered, the ends of his hair standing right up.

Wolford stared at him with eyes as big as saucers. "That takes the price." He smiled back at Carl, holding back his laughter of the images in his head, 'how would a hippo perform CPR on a lynx? Or any smaller mammal for that case?'

"Either way, we're here now." Carl stated as he opened one of the elephant-sized double doors and walked inside, Wolford following suit.

Walking up towards a desk Wolford was reminded of the one Clawhauser sits at the ZPD, except this one was messier, WAY messier. Wolford could only point and stare, words not formulating properly at the sight the amount of paperwork and other debris that the desk contained.

"Hey Carla! Just checking by to get some fresh clothes." Carl waved at the stack of papers. He heard something shuffle behind them and saw a waving paw stick out from the top of them.

Carl gestured towards the stairs, "This way."

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"So you're telling me," Wolford began, holding out his paws in front of him as if it would help him grasp what he saw. "You wake up, do some chores and then goof around in the station all day?"

Carl gave an amused huff at this. "Pretty much, although this is just the second day of my job, i've got goofing around to catch up on later." He joked.

"The only thing we got in our breakroom is an old VCR television, and it's locked on an infomercial channel!" Wolford cried out. He had become somewhat jealous at the sight of the ZPFD's breakroom and accompanying televisions with consoles and so on.

"Hah! Should've picked firefighter!" Carl laughed at Wolford's expense before calming down and tugging at his pager. He'd changed out of the button-up shirt and slacks combo and into something a bit more fitting, a red t-shirt with the letters ZPFD printed on the back and tan cargo-shorts.

"Har har." Wolford rolled his eyes, before his ears perked up at the sound of his ringtone.

" **Hey future Tim, this is past Tim! Chief Bogo is calling you! Act natural! Also pick up!"**

"Nice ringtone," Carl noted teasingly, only being met with a stare that said 'ugh'.

"Hey chief, wassup?" Wolford asked, although he tried to sound calm his nervousness could be heard, even sensed around him.

When Wolford wasn't met with loud shouting his heart rate began to calm down again.

"Wolford, since you're still not fit for active duty I have another assignment for you." The chief began.

"What's the assignment chief? As the doctors said I can't do anything physical for another six days." Wolford was still nervous, although not scared to death he still feared what his boss had in store for him.

"I was originally going to have to spare two of my officers for this assignment, but as you may know we need every available resource right now since crime rates have skyrocketed in the past month." Shuffling of papers could be heard before the mammal on the phone continued.

"And since the mayor is obsessed with positive publicity he thought it would be a fantastic idea if you and that firefighter hotshot went to a school to hold an event." The chief didn't sound to eager towards the idea, but after all, the mayor could cut the ZPD's funding at anytime, that was enough incentive for the chief to comply.

Carl made a face at being called a hotshot. But didn't think too long on it.

"I will send you the details, be there on time, or you're on parking duty for a year when you come back!" And with that a click could be heard.

"You said you didn't like five year olds?" Wolford grinned evilly at Carl.

Carl swallowed before asking the wolf. "How many?"

"Half the school, cirka two hundred, a hundred and fifty of them being bunnies." Wolford laughed.

All Carl could bring himself to do was to weakly laugh along."

' _Jesus Capybara help me in this time of need!'_

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry if this chapter felt like filler, the truth is that this is filler, the good kind that tastes like pears and is all creamy.**

 **Also, it's Sweden's national day! No party, no fireworks, just 'this is nice'.**

 **Time to get back into my schedule.**


	13. Go out with a bang!

**A/N: Whoo boy! Never thought i'd get this far. All the support from the reviews and PM's really help me motivate myself to keep these coming, and with summer break on the horizon I can dedicate more time to write these, granted I don't get stuck on youtube.**

…

 **I got stuck on youtube again. Damn you new videos! *clicks another one* I'll save that one for later.**

Oooooo

"You got everything?" Wolford asked as he looked over to Carl that was busying himself with shoving something into a backpack.

"Now I do." He replied while slinging a grey and blue backpack onto his back. "You?"

"Yup, let's get going." Wolford smiled as he waved Carl to follow.

They exited out of the locker room of the ZPFD once again, having to return there to get some 'special equipment' that they needed for their 'special assignment'. Carl let out a bored sigh, he just didn't do kids, he had tried a couple of day jobs that involved looking after kits, cubs, and so on. Needless to say they didn't end too well.

"It won't be _that_ bad." Wolford tried to reassure him, giving him a friendly shove with his elbow.

Carl straightened himself, focusing forward he stated. "I don't do kids, like, at all." He held out his hands in front of his chest as if pushing something away from himself.

Wolford rolled his eyes, "Then why'd you become a firefighter? Talking to kids is practically in the job description!" Wolford told him, giving him a smug smile.

Carl raised a digit in objection when he stopped, he was right.

"I had just changed out of these" The lynx muttered while tugging at his uniform.

oooooo

"Hello Mr. Wolford! Are you going to hold the presentation?" A tiger kitten asked with high hopes in his voice.

"Yep! Me and Firemammal Carl over here!" Wolford gestured towards Carl that was busy scratching his elbow.

"Woah," The little tiger gasped, "A police officer and firefighter at the same time!" The next sound that left the excited kitten had never been recorded in the history of animal existence, Carl and Wolford assumed it meant he was happy, although that is still a theory.

Wolford froze for a second before facing Carl and pointing at the small tiger. "That ball of fluff there is Delgato's kid. If you didn't already make the connection." Wolford grinned at Carl.

"I hope that they're all this easily entertained, that'd make this a whole lot easier on me." Carl sighed, scratching his head in wonder. 'Do they never run out of energy?' One thought led to another, before he knew it, he was daydreaming.

"Let's go, we got the first class in about ten minutes." Wolford waved for Carl to follow but stopped when he realized he wasn't responding.

Carl stared lazily at a point in the wall, drool dangerously close to reach critical mass and fall to the floor. Wolford snapped his fingers in front of Carl's face, when that didn't do anything he did the unspeakable.

"Ow!" Carl jerked back throwing his paws up to shield his tufts of hair that had been painfully assaulted by the tip of a claw. "What was that for?" Carl waved his arms around as if it would emphasise his point further.

"You're drooling like a three-year old in the corridor, I'm doing you a favour." Wolford informed Carl. "Now let's get a move on!"

Carl grumbled quietly for himself while following the wolf down the corridor, the school had a polished tile floor that went well with the wooden walls, the latter being decorated with countless arts and crafts-projects. It gave the hallways a personalized touch, setting them apart from one another, judging by the amount of self portraits that depicted rabbits Carl concluded that he would see a lot of them.

"Excuse me miss, are you Maggie by chance?" Wolford kindly asked an elderly ewe that stood outside a door, holding a cup of milky tea that smelled of vanilla. 'Way to push the stereotype' Carl thought as the ewe looked up from her drink.

"Yes, I'm Maggie, pleasure to meet you officer…" The ewe gently stretched her hoof out to meet Wolford's paw."

"Wolford, Tim Wolford." He completed her sentence and smiled warmly at her.

"And you are?" Maggie asked Carl in a slightly less enthusiastic manner.

"I'm Carl Matthew White, firefighter." He said carefully while keeping his face neutral, trying his best to smile in a 'non-offensive' way.

The sheep gave him a happy sounding 'hpmf', that was good enough for him. She turned back to Wolford, her smile quickly warming up again.

"You're here to hold a meeting of sorts for the schoolchildren if I remember correctly." The ewe raised an eyebrow at the end of her question.

"Yeah, wh-" Wolford was cut off by Maggie who simply pointed at door behind them.

Wolford thanked Maggie before turning to Carl who simply nodded, as they entered Carl whispered to Wolford, "Dude she got a crush on you, two hundred percent!"

Wolford answered with a snort before turning to look out over the class. Carl entered a second after and thankfully wasn't the center of attention just yet, he surveyed the class.

There were four classes they were supposed to visit today, going off of the info he'd gotten from Wolford there were two hundred schoolchildren divided by four, so fifty in each class. From what he'd heard cirka one hundred and fifty of them were bunnies.

He had to be the luckiest unlucky lynx on planet earth, the class consisted entirely of bunnies. The lucky part being that this assignment wasn't really 'hard'. The unlucky part being this assignment being this assignment.

"Hey kits!" Wolford announced, and with those words fifty pairs of ears were suddenly angled towards him. The entire classroom turning completely quiet, _too quiet_.

"Hello Mr. Wolf!" The class replied back in a disorganized heap.

Wolford straightened his t-shirt before continuing on, "My name is Tim, me and Carl over here are going to teach you some things involving fire safety, first aid, calling the police and much more, you guys ready to start?"

Carl had never been to a rock concert but figured this would resemble the crowd in one pretty accurately. The squeals and happy shouts were almost unbearable, unbearably cute.

Bit his smile transitioned into a face of pure shock and horror as the entire class was now looking at him, waiting for him to do something.

"Uh, yeah, hi…" Carl gave them a small wave, "As Tim said i'm a firefighter and EMT at the ZPFD, I will also be here today." Carl finished meekly, waiting for the screams and shouts to erupt, but instead of negative feedback he got something he didn't expect, questions, about twelve thousand of them.

"Do you get to drive?"

"Do you have a jetpack on your back?"

"Is it true you can lift a million tons with one arm?"

"Can I touch your ears?"

"Do you _have_ to wear boots?"

"What's a Eee emm tee?"

Wolford stepped in form Carl that was visibly paling, acting as his shield against the questions.

"Whoa whoa, slow down everyone, you can ask questions later once we're done with the presentation." Wolford reassured the crowd who responded with a mix of 'aww' and 'ok'.

Carl took a deep breath before setting the backpack down, opening it up and sifting through it's contents before nodding to Wolford, _'showtime'._

"So, what do you do if you hear the fire alarm?" Wolford began.

oooooo

"Now, who wants to be mammal that have caught fire?" Wolford asked enthusiastically while looking out over the class, out of the sea of waving hands he picked one in the middle rows.

"Please come up here." Wolford waved the young doe to stand next to him. The brown colored doe happily complied and bounced to a halt next to Tim who was towering over her.

He knelt down and asked her softly, "What's your name?" To which she wasted no time and quickly replied, "Victoria Goldenstraw."

Wolford was happy that she didn't seem the least bit afraid of him, even though he was five times her size and a predator. Wolves didn't have a very good reputation among bunnies, rabbits and especially sheep, so he was happy for a change.

"Now Victoria, please lay down here, Tim gestured towards a table in the middle. Giggling she quickly jumped up and stood on the table, before laying flat on her back. Wolford chuckled before turning back to look at the remaining class. "Now who would like to help Carl here save her?"

Every single paw was up. Carl's jaw hang agape wide enough to fit a watermelon in there. ' _What'd I do to deserve this?'_ He cried out inwardly.

Closing his mouth he quickly shuffled through the backpack and fished out a blanket used to suffocate fires. He had been so busy with packing into it's little container he didn't notice the little kit that had snuck up on him.

' _Relax Carl, it's all right, they actually like you, deep breaths.'_

"He held up the blanket in his paws, showing it to everyone in the classroom. "This is a suffocating blanket, they are usually found in these," Carl quickly fished out another item out of the backpack, a red rectangle with bold white letters reading 'fire blanket'. Two arrows on the box pointed towards to black straps that were hanging out of the box.

"You pull on these to release the blanket, would you like to give it a shot?" Carl asked the little kit that stood next to him, he nodded furiously. To which Carl lowered the red box down to the appropriate level.

"Just give them a real hard tug!" Carl encouraged the little kit whose name he'd forgot to ask for.

It took a few tries but eventually the familiar rip of velcro could be heard as the little kit got buried under a grey blanket, happy squeals emerging from underneath.

Victoria had to sit up, curious as of what was making the sounds. Carl assisted the little kit in folding the blanket out , giving them a surprisingly large grey blanket, it smelled of smoke and other charred things.

"Now you toss it over what's on fire and make sure no air gets in, that way you put out the fire." The young buck was about to start smothering Victoria with the grey cloth when Carl quickly interjected, "Be careful, she's still got to be able to breath."

oooooo

"I want to try on the helmet now!" a small grey doe said impatiently.

"Well, this wasn't so bad after all." Wolford sighed happily, taking in the sight of bunnymageddon, the classroom being a disorganized chaos of playing bunnies, half of them with golden stickers that read 'ZPD Junior detective' and the rest of them with a sticker that looked like a ZPFD Scramble*.

"Yeah" Carl had to agree, after the first twenty minutes things suddenly didn't seem as bad as they had, kind of like getting used to the cold in a pool.

A knock could be heard on the door, before any of them could answer a mountain goat stepped in, his outfit hinting at him being the janitor. "Which one of ya's Carl White?" The goat asked with a bored voice.

Carl turned to face him, "That would be me, who's asking?"

The goat stepped in and set down a nondescript brown cardboard box before addressing Carl once more.

"Some guy in the hallway wanted you to have this, says it's from a fan."

"Ooh, secret admirer for the big and great firefighter is it?" Tim teased.

"Har har," Carl deadpanned before extending a claw to start cutting the tape.

"Let's crack this baby open…"

oooooo

 ***Click*** "Nine one one, what's your emergency?"

"You heard explosions coming from inside? Stay calm, state the address and we'll send help."

"Savannah Central Junior High? Don't worry, help's on the way."

 ***Click***

 **A/N: Ooooooh, scary! What will happen next? I have no idea! And I'm the one writing this! Time to jump to light speed!**

 ***Woosch!***

 **PS. Big thanks to Arrow1021 for giving me inspiration, it helped me tremendously in deciding where to take it!**

 **PPS. And to Peter for your suggestions too.**

 **PPPS. And to the rest of you who read it and review it, even if you only write "Nice job" it boosts my ego even more then a double espresso with red bull does (and with it my will to write as well).**


	14. Hearts, Memories and Dreams

Blackness. Whatever all the different religions had said happened after death must be false, there were no angels or Nirvana. Or maybe there is, Carl thought deeply to himself, maybe he was still alive. He had tried to open the box when in a sudden flash everything had gone dark and his ears weren't hearing anything.

'Status check.' he joked to himself, good, that part's still there. He tried to wiggle his toe, somewhere in that dark void he was floating he could sense something, it felt like a part of him. 'Toe one is operational.'

That's when he felt something warm on his chest, he couldn't figure out what, but suddenly the dark void felt much warmer than before. He tried to open his eyes, but they were either glued shut or not responding. He was about to try and speak when the dark void suddenly felt a lot darker, he slipped into unconsciousness once more.

oooooo

 ***BEEP* *BEEP* *BEEP***

"Emergency, Explosion, possible fire, rescue required, Savannah Central, calling engine zero-one…" The station announcement system spouted on and on, but everyone already knew the drill. The second they heard the numbers they were already getting dressed.

"Saved by the bell." Houston quipped at Kenneth, who was about to lose the game of pool when he was in fact saved by the 'bell'.

"I try." He replied with a smirk, pretending to polish his claws.

The two of them dropped their cues and sprinted towards the slide bar, they were lucky that they weren't doing anything else, like getting lunch or showering, a secret paranoia Houston had.

"Hey, i've been wondering." Houston asked the hyena while simultaneously getting his gear on.

"Yeah?" Kenneth replied with curiosity, not taking his eyes of his current task of buttoning up his pants.

"What do you do if you're showering or on the toilet and the alarm goes?" Houston asked, his tone that of a curious child.

Kenneth simply grinned at him before answering in a playful tone, "Catch up." And with that he was done and heading towards Fire engine one. Houston snorted and rolled his eyes before slapping on his helmet and catching up to the rest of the crew.

Sitting up into the back seat of the fire truck Houston turned to Will who was currently trying to tie his boots. Although it was entertaining Houston tried to start a conversation.

"I wish Carl was here, he's missing out." He sighed, it had only been one day, but it still felt like an eternity. He missed him and his banter.

"Yeh, he got one day in before getting a babysitting job." Will agreed while getting his head stuck in the nomex hood, Houston shared his pain, while the hoods did protect them from heat they were a pain in the behind to put on.

The garage doors opened slowly, and with them came the sound of the mighty diesel engine sparking to life, shaking the ground with it, no matter how many times, it still felt amazing.

Flashing lights dominated the engine hall as engines one and two rolled out. That's when they saw Bosede and Carla in their own "small" car, the command car. Bosede had an expression that Houston and Will had never seen before, that being a face of fear. They had theorised that either he didn't have a soul and could only express anger or the more logical theory, he didn't want to appear weak in front of everyone.

"Kenneth, this is Station manager Carla, i'll be your commanding officer on this mission. I'm sending the address now." Carla's voice rung out over the radio followed by a burst of beeps and boops.

Kenneth keyed the mic, "Understood, I'm en route."

Will huffed, "So much for those radio classes."

"What do you mean?" Both Houston and Kenneth asked, luckily the latter did not take his eyes of the road.

"We went through all these classes learning different codes, response codes, command cues and all that, but ya never use em'." Will directed mainly towards the hyena in the front.

"To be honest with you, I don't remember any of them, but the good new is that no one else does either," he stifled a laugh and continued, "let's be honest, only the cops are that serious, that's the only time you've got to act like you know what you're doing."

This earned him a laugh from everyone in the vehicle and even got Adrian to happily mumble "good one". It was not often he spoke, but when he did it was for a good reason.

oooooo

"Ugh," Carl mumbled while slowly moving his paw to feel his head, he could barely lift it, it felt like someone had strapped a ten kilo dumbbell to each of his paws. He tried to open his eyes once more, they slowly lifted themselves up, what he saw was a gray haze. Only now could he smell burnt wood and plastic swirling through the air. When it found it's way down to his lungs it felt like a thousand needles cutting into him, the pain numbed after a short while but he could still _feel_ it.

He was low to the ground where the smoke hadn't fully engulfed everything, he looked over to the other side of the room and saw Wolford laying strewn out in the corner, he slowly and painfully crawled over to him and put his ear to his chest, he couldn't hear anything. He was starting to panic, tugging at his ears and flailing his arms around when he realized he couldn't hear anything.

He then put two digits on the wolf's throat and felt for a pulse, ah, there it is. He sighed in relief, well, it came out more as a pathetic wheeze. Memories came flooding back, he was in a school, there was smoke, 'oh god, the kits!' He let go of Wolford and made his way down to the benches, squinting to make out anything, it seemed they'd all run out, the explosion must not have been that big. The heat of the room was steadily rising, within a few minutes he'd be lynx lynx á la carte along with his friend.

He whimpered as he once again turned to crawl back to his canine companion, every muscle in his body was sore even though he'd not done anything physical, that's when he noticed the small red trail he'd left behind, he was bleeding. Suddenly the muscle ache didn't feel as bad.

oooooo

"That's a fire all right." Will deadpanned at the sight of the massive smoke column rising from the roof.

"Gear up, we're the ones going in risking our tails this time." Kenneth announced while speeding through an intersection at dangerously high speeds, strap some wings onto the truck and it might have taken off.

"Figured," Houston shrugged, "makes sense to only send the best of the best." He finished with a smirk, which earned him a chuckle from Will.

The truck stopped with a screech that could be heard over the screaming sirens, pulling the handbrake the team wasted no time. All doors popped open in a timed unison, out stepped the ZPFD's best rookies, ready to take on anything.

"Houston and Will, get ready for a quick rescue, the fire may spread before we get these hoses ready." Kenneth then ordered them to only take what they'd need.

Houston being the bigger one of them decided to pick a suitable sledgehammer, flathead axe and crowbar, while Will picked a fire extinguisher, crowbar and a shoulder mounted high power floodlight.

Houston keyed the microphone, "PASS device armed, air tanks are full, we are moving in." A few seconds passed before a voice came back, "Be careful, the building could collapse at anytime." The voice belonged to Station manager Carla.

And with that they set off towards the main entrance, they would enter there and make their way towards the fire, sweeping the rooms to make sure no one remained. 'Just like in training' Houston reassured himself. Even though he knew that he was prepared for anything he were still afraid each time the alarm rung out, as any sane mammal would be.

'This could be the night' he reluctantly thought, 'damn, I haven't even wrote my will yet' he chuckled inwardly.

After a few minutes they had searched all the classrooms and found no one, as they made their way down the hallway towards the fire they could see it, smoke, like reverse water it flowed above them. Their visibility would only become worse from here on out.

"Good thing I brought this," Will flicked a switch and the massive flood light awoke, it's white beam cutting through the smoke a good few metres before dissipating into the toxic fog.

They continued walking until they noticed a door from which the smoke seeped out from every nook and cranny. Opening the door they were greeted to a big classroom, at least they thought it was a classroom, a good portion of it was a horrible and mangled mess, and the rest of it was currently on fire, the orange flames hard to see through the black haze.

Houston took a step forward when his boot touched something hard and plastic, he bent down to pick it up, it was a ZPFD helmet, he dropped it in shock, it was Carl's helmet. He was pulled out of his trance when Will asked him something, "How much can you carry?"

Houston was thrown off by the question but answered it nonetheless, "A lot," It wasn't the best of answers but he didn't even know himself how much he could carry.

Will asked a follow up question, "like, can you carry a Wolf and a Lynx at the same time?"

Houston didn't answer, instead he dropped his tools and got over to where Will was situated. There right next to him laid a heap of gray, black and white fur, the smoke making it difficult to make out any distinguishing features.

He picked up the mass of fur and saw that there were a second one, effortlessly and without a word he slung the other mass of fur over his second shoulder before heading towards the exit, motioning for Will to follow.

On his radio he could hear Will's voice, "we found two mammals at the epicentre of the fire, were heading out now, weight class…" he scanned the two bodies that were slung over his friend's shoulders, estimating their weight he continued, "weight class no less than thirty kilos and no more than, uh, sixty, I think, don't quote me on that."

Thanks to them sprinting the way back they made it back in one minute flat, outside the main entrance two medium-sized stretchers awaited them, the ambulances had not yet arrived.

From behind one of the firetrucks a certain polar bear stepped out, her face was that of extreme concentration. She turned to face Will and Houston. "Any injuries besides from smoke inhalation, I swear to-" she paused for a second when she saw what was apparently the lynx. She keyed her satellite radio, "We have a code red, come as quickly as you can, THAT IS AN ORDER!" She roared out the last part, both Will and Houston backed away slightly at that, they'd never seen her so angry.

Only now did Houston have time to process what was in front of him, he dropped to his knees, it was Carl he was seeing, his chest was completely red, his right arm was bent backwards with his elbow facing the wrong way, the fingers were all splayed out in different angles that fingers shouldn't be. His face had luckily not been to badly damaged, except for his left ear, that now had a huge dent in the middle section.

Will had taken one glance at Carl and was now behind one of the trucks, either his eyes or his nose couldn't take it anymore, there went his lunch.

Bosede went over to Houston and put his trunk on his shoulder, he sighed before he began talking. "Do you know why i'm always so hard on you all?" His tone was sincere, it felt like it had been damaged.

Houston didn't answer, he just shrugged his shoulders, Bosede continued, "It's because i've been through this, more than once, losing someone from the station is like losing a family member. And no matter how much I try and prepare and train all of you, nothing can prepare one for this, it's the inevitable."

"So it's true." Houston mumbled softly.

"What is?" Bosede inquired.

"You really are just a big softie on the inside." A hint of a smile could be seen on Houston's muzzle.

Bosede smiled back, "I guess I am." He cleared his throat before getting back into his usual mood. "No one else will know of this or you're dead." he said with a wink.

"Sure." Houston stood up as well.

"We still have a fire to put out, ON THE DOUBLE!" Bosede bellowed.

oooooo

 **A/N: NOOOOOOOoooooooooOOOOOOOOoooooo, You can't just end it there!**

 **Well, yes, es I can. Also I'm sorry for missing my upload schedule, I have no real excuse except I'm a lazy bum.**

 **It's now the story is going to pick up a bit. Don't worry, there's still plenty of chapters left, I think, and even if there weren't i'd just make a season 2 or something.**

 ***Scribbles down 'sequel' in imaginary notepad***


	15. The two-eleven

**A/N: Without further ado, more story to smash into your eye-holes!**

"I don't see him anywhere." Nick pointed out as they looked around the lobby of the cinema. "I bet he's at home crying himself to sleep."

"He's just lost a friend," Judy scolded the fox, "the least we could do is to cheer him up." Judy finished somberly.

Nick noticed that Judy's expression told him he'd gone too far with that "joke". She looked at him sadly, "who would do such a thing?" She asked, knowing he didn't have an answer.

"My guess is some pred hating sicko," He shook his head.

"But the room was full of kits," She cried out quietly.

Nick shrugged, "I guess he thought it was a fair tradeoff."

Judy's face shrunk into one of complete concentration, something wasn't adding up. Her train of thought was stopped when she heard the tell-tale sound of hooves. There he was, Houston, his brown fur looked a bit worse for wear. His entire stature radiated 'worn out'. He greeted them in a neutral tone.

"Hey guys," He smiled weakly at them, it wasn't very convincing. "Excited to see the movie?"

Judy decided to play along, pretending not to notice the obvious emotional turmoil stirring within him. "Yeah, Jack Savage Eight, Revenge of Doctor Roboto!" She smiled at him, giving Nick a "gentle" nudge in his stomach region he greeted Houston too.

"What's up?" He leaned to the side and used Judy's head as an armrest, pretending not to notice her obvious frustration with the gesture.

"Well, except for the whole thing with Carl," He paused and glanced away for a second before continuing, "Not much, everyone have been pretty nice to me, it's almost starting to get annoying." A small chuckle could be heard.

oooooo

"Did you find any clues?" Houston asked the duo.

"Unfortunately not, an explosion tends to be quite an effective way of destroying evidence." Nick deadpanned.

"Did you notice anything while rescuing them?" Judy shot up.

Houston frowned, "No, it was too dark,"

"Well," Judy began, "Whoever did it must have been a professional, there's only a few places where you can get your paws on explosives bigger than firecrackers." She pulled out her phone and started searching.

Nick and Houston looked at each other with confused looks until their attention was once again directed onto Judy.

"Hamlet Mining is the only active mining operation in Zootopia," She stated matter o factly, "And the equipment they're using include remote detonated explosives."

"That's oddly specific," Houston remarked.

Judy gave him a serious look. "I doubt your friend or Wolford would willingly set off an explosion, so it has to be this." She slapped the phone screen with the back of her paw to emphasize the point.

"Who's supplying them with the explosives then?" Nick chimed in, now that they might be onto something.

Judy smirked, "no one, they make them on site."

"So you're saying some mammal stole remote detonated explosives from a mining operation to use them against schoolchildren." Houston deadpanned. His face that of disbelief.

"That's the only thing we have to go off of right now." She shrugged, "Me and Nick will see if we can get a search warrant for this."

"It will be easy, Wolford was caught in the blast as well, he doesn't take lightly to his officers getting hurt, twice." Nick supplied.

"Twice, twice….," Houston gasped, "Wolford was almost blown up twice! Maybe the guy is targeting Wolford?" Houston was desperately looking for a lead, something that would lead them to the perpetrator. One could argue if this was better than Houston sitting at the station moping, neither alternative would help.

oooooo

"Poor guy," Judy looked out the window of the police cruiser.

"Yeah, I've seen the pictures from the case, must have been on a whole other level to see it first hand." Nick responded with a relaxed tone while leaning back into the passenger seat.

"What _if_ the two cases are tied together, Wolford did almost get blown up twice, and then there was that truck explosion."

Their speculating and theorycrafting was suddenly interrupted when a voice came in over the radio.

"This is Officer McKinzey to any nearby units, we've got a two-eleven in progress at sunset avenue."

"Armed robbery." Nick stated flatly. "Let's get going."

Judy nodded and started their patrol car while Nick keyed the radio. "Ten-four, this is Officer Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps, were en-route!"

The radio quickly responded, "suspect is a male caribou in his mid twenties, suspect is still inside the hardware store."

oooooo

"What's the situation McKinzey?" Nick asked the boar that was taking cover behind his patrol car.

As if the suspect had heard him ask a loud 'thunk' could be heard slamming into the car's windshield.

"Suspect's using a high-powered nail gun as a makeshift weapon." The boar reported. "Has holed himself up in there real tight."

Judy quickly formulated a plan. Nick and McKinzey were to keep distracting the caribou while Judy would sneak in behind and tranq the suspect.

"Go." She ordered Nick and McKinzey. She started running to the end of the block.

"HEY! YOUR HORNS ARE TOO SMALL!" Nick yelled towards the hardware store, his insult was answered with a quick burst of additional nails slamming into various parts of McKinzey's car, he winced with each shot.

"Bogo is going to kill me." He whimpered.

"Don't worry, it was Judy's plan." He reassured.

That's when they heard the signature 'POP' followed with the thump of the caribou hitting the floor. Walking in they found Judy proudly standing on the suspect, cuffs in hand.

oooooo

"Strange," said Judy as she opened the caribou's duffel bag. Nick looked up from his portable laptop he was currently busy writing a report on.

"He's only stolen nails, propane tanks and two gas masks, you'd think they'd go for the crowbars and and other tools." She remarked. "What did you find on his profile?"

"He's a real troublemaker, he's been known to steal for money, not unlike Weaselton during the nighthowler case."

"Do you think he knows something?" Judy asked, Nick answered with a shrug.

oooooo

"Ugh, where am I?" The caribou awoke to find himself cuffed to a table in a blank room, the only noteable features were the one-way glass and the reinforced steel door.

Said door opened and in stepped a small grey ball of fluff.

"You're under arrest for aggravated robbery." Judy informed him in an official tone. "Now, that earns you the prize of 2 years luxury stay in prison."

The only answer she got was a disinterested huff from the caribou. She carried on.

"Now, I can lower that to six months if you tell me who you hired you."

"No one hired me, I was going to use it myself." He coldly stated, avoiding eye contact with her.

"Well, we took the liberty of searching your belongings and found this," she presented a small envelope, the letter inside along with a huge stack of money.

He didn't say a word, simply just staring angrily at her as if it would make her go away.

"Ahem," She mockingly cleared her throat. "Hammy's Hardware store, two propane tanks, two gas masks (one small, short muzzle, one medium, long muzzle) two kilograms of steel nails.

As discussed, the payment is included, Standard dead drop spot, read this and burn it afterwards."

She finished reading and looked up, "Now, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way."

The caribou huffed, "You ain't scaring me."

"The hard way it is then." She said, smiling happily at him, earning her a confused look from the caribou.

oooooo

"He doesn't know his or her name or species, only that they apparently are very fond of tinkering." She announced happily to Nick who had been sitting on his computer waiting for Bogo to answer, he was currently watching a "funny" video on Ewetube, he chuckled a little as the video showed a wolf on a skateboard slam into an elephant.

"Wolves," he chuckled while shaking his head.

He paused the video before swivelling around in his office chair to face Judy. "Did he know anything?"

Judy rolled her eyes, "we've got an address."

"Here's hoping."

oooooo

"Unnaceptable." A low voice growled, watching the CCTV screen where they saw a caribou be escorted into a police cruiser.

They looked to their left, a screen was currently displaying a news article, "BOMB ATTACK HITS SCHOOL, FIREFIGHTER AND POLICE OFFICER CAUGHT IN BLAST"

'I have a lot work ahead of me' they thought, closing down the tab they were greeted by the ZPFD's website, particularly the employees section.

"Next target…"

 **A/N: Spooky villain!**

 **Carl next episode though.**

 **Also, sorry if this is not up to standard with the other episodes, I'm kinda stressed out, with school soon ending it's a ton of events and all that crap, but after that i'm in the clear.**

 **Smooth sailing for me, dangerous action for Carl and Houston.**


	16. Reunion

**A/N: I'll let you read.**

Slowly fading back to his senses Carl felt numb, like, REALLY numb. He tried to turn his head but could not bring his body to do it. He slowly opened his eyes and saw a white ceiling. He could hear faint mumbles from behind the single door that was in the room.

The room was fairly minimalistic, a bed with a bedside table, a sink in one of the corners and various other machines and such that he did not know what they did. There were also a single window that let the sun shine into the room, giving it a warm tone that the harsh clinical lights did not.

He tried to sit up but could feel a horrible pain form in his abdomen, forcing him to relax back into laying flat. Carl tried to call out for anyone but all the noise he could produce was a faint wheeze and gurgle. While he could not move, at least he was conscious. Trying to remain positive he tried to replay all the events leading up to waking up in a hospital.

There was a school presentation, then a package from a 'fan', why would I have fans? And then in the blink of an eye he was crawling on the floor.

And now he was here.

His thoughts were interrupted when a beaver nurse had walked in. She quickly noticed the lynx's eyes tracking her and gasped in shock. Carl had just tried to ask where he was when she was out the doors again. A few minutes of painful silence later a badger in a white coat, presumably a doctor walked in and greeted Carl.

"Ah I see you're awake." He said in a calm, soothing tone. He proceeded to lower the bed so that he could easily reach.

Carl gathered his efforts and although frail and quiet he managed to ask, "Where am I?"

The badger looked up from his small clipboard and answered, "Savannah Central Hospital, you were involved in a bomb attack, it's a miracle your limbs are still attached." The badger noted.

The doctor proceeded to show Carl several x-rays and photos detailing the extent of his injuries. It was truly a miracle, Carl couldn't really process that what he was seeing was him, he looked like an unidentifiable pulp of gray and red. That's when he remembered Wolford, who had also been there. He was about to ask the badger what had happened to his canine friend when something the doctor said grabbed his attention.

"-and as you can see here you right arm was detached from its joint when you arrived here a few _days_ ago." The doctor tapped one of his claws on a x-ray photo.

"A few DAYS?" Carl asked in shock, his voice suddenly regaining its strength, he attempted to sit up once more but again fell back onto his back with a pained grunt.

The badger gently placed his paws on Carl's shoulder while telling him to relax, a quick tap of a button raised the mattress up, allowing Carl to sit up properly. The doctor took a deep breath before looking at Carl with a glum look.

"You have been in a coma for three days, which is a miracle by itself considering your injuries, broken bones, disjointed limbs, extreme blood loss, blood poisoning, asphyxiation, and that's just the tip of the iceberg."

Carl tried not to cry, and failed miserably. He did not know why he cried, but it felt good, like the tears were draining the pain and taking it with it. He looked sadly at the badger, trying to keep his voice from cracking.

"Does my mom and dad know?" He asked, last time he had seen them had been at the graduation, which seemed like a distant memory now, how his mom had filmed him getting knocked down by a high-powered water stream. He smiled faintly.

The doctor seemed to notice and his calm voice now returned, perhaps a bit happier as well, Carl couldn't tell. "Your parents were here the first day you were wheeled in, they wanted me to tell you that they hope to see you again, and that they have agreed to not post a certain video of you." The badger held a paw to his head as he remembered what Rose White had said.

The doctor shook his head and got back to his clipboard, he read up on it a short while before he spoke, "Your right arm was disjointed as a result of it being the closest to the blast we presume, we were able to reattach it after multiple surgeries." Carl shuddered ' _good thing I was out cold"_ he thought optimistically. "You also had multiple shards of shrapnel in your torso area, some of them cut deep, I'd recommend you take it easy with the sit ups," the badger quipped before chuckling to himself.

After he had recovered from his oh so funny joke he continued to list all the things Carl was happy to be out cold for. "You lost almost half your blood, but that's not what caused the coma, no, the cause of the coma was a combination of asphyxiation and blood poisoning. We didn't even need a spinal tap to figure that out."

"On a minor note your left ear now has a big dent in it, some stray shrapnel cut it off." The badger gestured towards the lynx's head. Carl guided his left paw up to the mentioned area, just like the doctor had pointed out a huge portion of his left ear was missing in the mid-section, the dent almost going as far in as the center. Luckily his tuft was intact, god bless his tufts.

"When can I get out of here?" Carl asked in a worried tone, he needed to talk to his family and friends.

The doctor shrugged, "While it's obvious, well should be obvious that you can't return to any active firefighting duty I could clear you for officework if you so wish."

Carl lit up, smiling excitedly. "That'd be great, I really need to see my family."

The doctor let out an amused huff, "Don't we all?"

oooooo

It didn't take more than two hours before Carl could roll out of the hospital on his sick new ride, a wheelchair that was thankfully provided to him by the government free of charge, yet another wonderful perk you get for serving zootopia. I was late afternoon and a light breeze could be felt, like _really_ felt, they unfortunately had to shave most of his fur of his left arm, chest and stomach region. Thankfully they had long sleeved shirts at the reception for just these situations.

It didn't bother him much, his fur was already starting to fall on its own, spending more time in warmer climates did have an effect on some seasonal mammals. For example, rabbits that spend a lot of time in Tundratown will inevitably change color to white, their ancestors did this to blend in with the snow, since they were hunted by savage predators way back then.

Carl started making his way downtown towards the ZPFD, it would take him ten minutes using his legs and he figured it wouldn't be any slower in a wheelchair, he did have the arm strength for it, pulling miles upon miles of hose in training did have some payoff here.

He didn't like it, the stares, odd looks, what was so weird about a mammal in a wheelchair? Carl was starting to get annoyed, he almost wanted to shout at them to mind their own business, but figured it would only draw more looks. He was about to cross a street when the light switched to red, grumbling he came to a halt and waited for it to turn to green again.

"Are you _really_ the firemammal that got blown up?" A curious piglet asked next to him.

A larger sow quickly approached and apologized, "Sorry, he doesn't mean to be rude."

Carl waved it off, "It's alright, and yes, I am the firemammal that got blown up." He answered the piglet who stared at him in awe, "Cool!"

Carl gave the piglet a smug grin, "It was no biggie."

oooooo

Entering the ZPFD's headquarters he was once again welcomed with the infamous desk of organized chaos. The air smelled of old and new coffee, paper, dust, diesel, soap and so on. Their headquarters were like an office building merged with a garage that was constantly cleaning and doing maintenance on something.

While the ZPD had cleaning staff doing everything for them the ZPFD took pride in maintaining everything themselves, something they would always remind the ZPD of every time the subject came up, Fire department one, Police department zero.

No matter how much cleaning they did the smell of oil and diesel did not cease to exist, not that anybody had a problem with it, in fact some thought it "added to the building's character".

Carla's desk was the only exception, ' _they really need a better system for that'_ Carl thought, he felt a bit sorry for Carla, always slaving away at her desk, only completing just enough paperwork to make room for new ones (and new coffee mugs). He supposed paperwork had to be done by someone, and was happy it wasn't him. If he'd wanted to do office work so badly he'd chose another profession.

"Hey Carla!" Carl greeted the polar bear who could be heard behind the piles of papers chugging away on her three-liter coffee mug.

"Mhhmhhm" She replied, moving some stacks of paper to the side so that she could see him.

"Oh hey, you're back early." She noted a bit surprised.

"Eh, it was just an attempt on my life by someone, no big deal, I couldn't stay in bed all day. I've been sleeping for three days apparently." The last part came out a bit somberly.

She smiled, "Sounds about right, now, since you're not leaving that chair for a good while I guess you can help with some paperwork later,"

"I guess I owe that much," Carl sighed, "But I want to see my friends and parents first, also don't give me anything hard, it'll go into one ear and out the other." He joked, before he frowned a bit and felt his left ear with his paw.

"Ouch…" Carla next to whispered, grimacing at the sight of the damage, it looked as if a savage of some type had bit it off.

"It doesn't hurt," Carl shrugged, "Besides, my tufts are still intact." He smiled happily.

Carla eyed Carl up and down for a bit with a face of deep concentration. "You look a bit different, not as gray." She gestured towards the top of his head, his arms still being covered by the long sleeves.

"Yeah, I've spent some time away from Tundratown plus it's that time of year anyways." He ruffled his forehead, some loose strands of fur tumbled to the ground.

Carla took another swig of her coffee before thumbing towards the elevator. "I think Bosede can wait with seeing your mug again, I think Houston is sitting in the break room."

Carl chuckled, "Thanks Carla." Carla was always nice it seemed, well he'd seen her two times, but that was enough, he almost forgot she was his superior, not that rank mattered though.

"See you round' Tufts." Carla replied before turning back to her computer.

Carl grimaced at hearing 'tufts'. Not the nickname he was going for. The elevator stopped and Carl rolled out. He made his way down the corridor, it smelled of old wood and coffee, the two things that there were the most of. The wood walls gave the second floor a really quaint and homely feel, it was perfect.

He turned the corner and at one of the tables sat a glum looking horse.

"Sorry, I slept over by three days." Carl joked.

Houston's ears perked up, his eyes wide with shock, he was frozen in place and could not believe his eyes.

"Carl…" Houston trembled, walking up and kneeling down to his friend.

"Yeah?" Carl asked.

Houston carefully embraced him in a gentle hug.

"You look like crap."

 **A/N: Woot Woot! Happy reunion! Thank god for modern medicine!**

 **Small-ish announcement: Summer break starts tomorrow which also marks the end of ninth grade, High School next. Good luck guessing my age with this info.**

 **Any and all feedback is appreciated.**


	17. Have a word with you

**2 Days Earlier**

Houston was scrubbing the tires of the fire truck while pondering. So far he hadn't heard anything new from the hospital. He had tried to ask anyone but all he got in return was that Carl's in critical condition. He had tried to do as Bosede does, not think about it, and if you did think about it, don't show that you did.

That strategy wasn't working very well, most people at the station could tell that Houston was in a pretty detrimental condition. They had tried cheering him up, but it had only taken his mind off his friend's condition for a short while. The thing that seemed to cheer him up most was to discuss Jack Savage movies.

"-yes, we're looking for a Houston, he works here." He heard someone, curious he turned to see who it was. He slightly jumped at the spark of the station's PA, "Houston, get your lazy butt to the reception!" Carla's voice rang out, followed by some chuckles from others around him.

When he walked into the reception he was greeted by two Lynxes and Carla looking at him.

"Yes?" Houston asked confused.

Carla gestured towards the couple, "this is Mrs and Mr White, Carl's parents." Carla explained.

"I knew that" Houston replied.

Carla rolled her eyes, "they wanted to meet you since you and Carl are such close friends."

"You two seemed so happy at the graduation." Rose, Carl's mother, said with a hint of sadness in her voice.

"We were, until they sprayed us with water." Houston said, a slight smirk on his muzzle.

oooooo

"Ugh, with all the things going on in the city today…" Bosede trailed off, "Fine."

Houston's eyes lit up like a kit on christmas, shaking his head he put on his most serious face and tone, "Thank you sir."

Just as he was about to leave Bosede interrupted him, "On ONE condition." He shouted out.

Houston shrugged, "Sure." Whatever it was it was worth it to go see Carl, even if he was out cold or worse…

"Cheer up, I'm the only one that has privilege to be mad twenty four seven." Bosede demanded.

"You got it."

oooooo

"Thank you for coming and visiting me." Houston thanked the pair in a thankful tone.

Rose just waved it off, "No, it should be us that thank you for coming with us, you're as close to him as we are, perhaps closer." She smiled.

"We spent a year together during our training, it's no surprise we got close, I don't know if I would have made it without him," Houston chuckled, "no matter how low and beaten we were we always found time to banter and joke around."

oooooo

 **Present**

"You look like crap."

"Dude, tell me about it." Carl joked back.

"First off, those bandages doesn't match with your ears," Houston joked but quickly faded when he noticed the sizeable dent in Carl's left ear. "Ouch, sorry."

Carl's smile faltered for a moment, "It's all good, nothing I can't handle, just a little bomb."

Houston frowned, "I'm all for jokes but you almost dying is where i draw the line."

Carl's smiled faded, "I'm sorry, it was in bad taste to joke about it, how have you been without me?" Carl answered in an apologetic tone.

"Pretty bummed out to be honest, most mammals on the station have tried to cheer me up."

"And how'd it do?" Carl asked curiously.

"Well, I promised Bosede to stop being such a downer, but Bosede isn't here now so." Houston sighed.

"Hey, I'm here now, albeit three days later." Carl comforted the horse.

"They wouldn't tell me anything regarding you, the last time I saw you. You looked like a mangled mess." Houston's eyes were wide open, reliving that horrible scene of seeing his friend on death's door.

"It's ok, It's ok I'm here now." Carl attempted to calm his friend who was visibly disturbed by what he saw. "I'll tell you what I know and you'll tell me what i've missed." Carl suggested in an optimistic tone, his eyes radiating a sense of comfort.

Houston took a deep breath and finally seemed to relax just a little bit, it would take time for him to recover, it would take time for both of them to recover.

"Okay, while you were snoozing away at the hospital two more bomb attacks have occurred, one in sahara square and one in tundratown." Houston told Carl. "They still don't know who is doing it, or why.

"Not that it's our job anyway." Carl sighed.

"I think Bosede would disagree," Houston interjected, this surprised Carl, what had happened to Houston during these three days? "Anyone attacking his men are his problem."

"Huh, talking about Bosede," Carl raised a digit, "I should probably let him know i've arrived."

Houston nodded, "That seems like a good idea." They both very well knew not to anger the elephant.

oooooo

"Are you sure this is a good idea sir?" Carl nervously asked the large elephant sitting sullenly in his chair. "I'm in a wheelchair! I just got out of the hospital!" He gestured towards himself in an attempt to make the elephant realize that the decision he'd made was bonkers.

Bosede silently raised a hoof to quiet Carl down. "First of all, I'm your superior and you adhere to my orders, second of all, our fire investigator died yesterday in one of those damned bomb attacks." Bosede slammed his fist down, "You seemed so eager to leave the hospital, keep that eagerness." Bosede smirked.

"But!" Carl cried out, when he'd left the hospital he was discharged with papers stating he was only cleared for office work, apparently investigating the causes for fires counted as office work now.

"No buts! Only yes sir." Bosede slammed his fist once again. He was about to go on a rant about why Carl was obliged to the job when his phone rang.

"Yes, he's here, yeah, he were to eager to leave early, you can meet him here, thank you." Bosede ended the call.

"It seems the police wants to have a word with you."

 **A/N: This episode was short, I know. I'm using it to set up the next chapter(s).**

 **Not to worry my friends, I'm not running dry. *shakes can of redbull* perhaps I am.**

 **Have ye faith!**

 **Ps. Houston & Wolford won't be left out.**

 **Pps. The crew won't be left out as well. (They're such a lovely bunch.)**


	18. A pattern

**A/N: He's back, but in a wheelchair for now.**

The tires let out a quick screech as the van came to a halt. The color of the van was a deep red with neon-yellow decals, on both sides of the van the words 'ZPFD Fire investigation' could be seen.

The driver door popped open and an audible grunt could be heard as a familiar lynx carefully stepped out of the van, he looked overhead, grey skies with a light drizzle. Using the side of the van as support he slowly edged himself towards the back doors. Swinging the back doors open he brought down a foldable wheelchair. He'd gotten a brief one-oh-one on how to set up his wheelchair, not that his legs were 'out of commission', it was his stomach region that had gotten peppered with shrapnel, they said the explosive was designed for just that to happen.

Taking a deep breath he swiftly sat down in the wheelchair, no matter how brief the moment it hurt all the same, even painkillers couldn't spare him from the shock and stab from the pain, it was as if his body remembered exactly how it had felt and needed to remind him about it every time he used those particular muscles. He winced, felt a sting, and waited. He muffled a growl, the worst pain always came as an after wave. He blinked and let out a sigh, it was over, for now.

Before slamming the door to the van shut he grabbed a bright orange case with reflective strips. Inside it was some equipment that would aid in the investigation, how did Bosede convince him to take this offer? While Carl was qualified in basic fire investigation he did not know half the names and functions of the gadgets he was carrying. Placing the case in his lap he began to wheel over to the entrance of the house, it was a small little villa in the downtown area, there were only a few of these left, most of them had been demolished in favour of apartment complexes.

"And who are you?" A rhino police officer asked Carl impatiently while eyeing him up and down.

"I'm the replacement Fire investigator." Carl stated matter-o-factly while showing his ID.

The rhino inspected the identification before giving it back and stepping to the side to let the Lynx inside.

"They must be desperate if they're sending mammals in wheelchairs." The rhino chuckled.

"Hey!" Carl wanted to scold him for saying that, but it was actually true, they were desperate. Since their original fire investigator had blown up yesterday they needed someone to fill in that spot until they could get someone qualified employed. And since Carl wasn't able to do his original job he sorta got placed on this out of desperation, something about 'needing every available personnel ready to move out'.

He rolled into the hall of the villa, everything here was so tidy, from this point of view nothing seemed out of the ordinary, until you look into the kitchen…

Even though the body was removed a few hours after the fire the smell of death still dominated the room that used to be a kitchen, dried spots of blood and small wads of fur were everywhere.

And in the middle of the room stood two familiar figures, a fox and a bunny.

"Backup has arrived." Carl said as he rolled over to the table the two of them were standing over.

Judy began speaking as she turned around, "Ah, Oscar, right? Bogo said that we'd get-" She paused and blinked in confusion at what was in front of her, it wasn't the boar that Bogo had described.

"Hello!" Carl weakly said and gave them a small wave.

"You again!" Judy exclaimed happily when she realized who was stand- erm, sitting in front of her. Her happy smile quickly faded and became a look of confusion once again.

"Why are you here?" She asked. Based of what she'd heard from reports Carl should either still be in the hospital or in the morgue…

"I'm the replacement investigator." Carl answered before tossing the case that he'd been carrying with him onto the table. Nick curiously opened the case to see what was inside. Inside it was some more specialized gear, Hydrocarbon detector, Activated charcoal, Velometer to name a few. Hopefully Carl wouldn't have to use them.

The air around him in the kitchen smelled of both death and of a fire long gone, some walls were barely standing since the fire had worked through most of it before it could be put out. It smelled like a campfire that was on it's last breath.

"What a mess." Carl glumly commented, he'd not really seen the destruction this up close before, well, he had but it wasn't like he could stay and admire the charcoal and melted plastic the fire left.

"Fifth bomb in a week." Nick added as he put on two blue rubber gloves. "The public is getting a bit uneasy."

"No wonder, I wouldn't want to be blown up either." Carl added.

"So, are you going to help or what?" Nick urged Carl, they could only keep the crime scene blocked off for so long before the demolition crew would tear what remained down.

Carl muttered under his breath and rolled over to the epicentre of the explosion, he could tell because there was a sizeable hole on the floor there, clinkers cracked outwards from this point, like roots from a tree, the rest of the blast was directed towards the stove and sink.

"So, have you found out anything yet?" Carl asked Judy while using a pincer to gather some bits of shrapnel for research.

"Nothing really, all we know is that someone started mailing people bombs after you showed up in the newspapers." Judy shrugged.

"Hm, Do you know where this mammal could have gotten access to explosive material?" Carl asked Judy. There must be something here, some type of pattern. Any clue would be a godsend.

"No," Judy frowned. "We got a warrant to search the mining company here in Zootopia and found nothing, the last time that place was robbed was ten years ago." She let out a defeated sigh, perhaps this case was impossible, every lead they had was a dead end, even that caribou's location that they'd wrestled out of him, no one showed up there, Nick and Judy ended up crouching behind a dumpster for a few hours before they gave up.

"Ugh." Carl sighed, he rolled over to Nick and Judy's laptop to review the case files and what they'd found out about the victims.

First there was a folder called Carl Matthew White. He got curious and opened it.

 **Name: Carl Matthew White**

 **Age: 22**

 **Species: Lynx (Lynx Lynx Lynx)**

 **Sex: M**

 **Occupation: Career Firefighter**

 **Description: Medium build, grey fur with black spots.**

 **Notable features: Tufts on ears are white in color (considered rare within this species)**

 **Subject was struck in abdomen, arm and ear with shrapnel, analysis reveals shrapnel consisted of normal nails and screws commonly found at hardware stores.**

 **Subject suffered extreme blood loss and blood poisoning and is currently in a coma at Savannah central hospital.**

 **Addendum: Whether subject is deceased is pending.**

Carl snorted at this, he was about to edit the case file when a password lock popped up, he grunted and clicked on the next folder.

 **[ DECEASED ]**

 **Name: Oscar Ellis Wienerburg**

 **Age: 43**

 **Species: Boar (Sus Scrofa)**

 **Sex: M**

 **Occupation: Fire investigator**

 **Description: Large build, grey fur.**

 **Notable features: N/A**

 **Subject was found in his home unconscious with extreme injuries in his abdomen and head, analysis reveals shrapnel consisted of common nails and screws found at hardware stores. Subject was rushed to intensive care.**

 **Injuries proved to be fatal, subject deceased on the fifth of june, 2017.**

"Damn…" Carl muttered, so this was the guy he was replacing. It felt weird to just read this report, to treat someone's death this cold and clinically. He understood why they did it, they couldn't get too attached to mammals, if they did they wouldn't be able to do their job. He exhaled and calmly went on to the last case, the one they were currently investigating for clues.

 **[ DECEASED ]**

 **Name: Catarina Ironpaw**

 **Age: 26**

 **Species: Torch key raccoon (Procyon Lotor Incautus)**

 **Sex: F**

 **Occupation: Accountant, Volunteer Firefighter**

 **Description: Pale fur, black paws, nose and eyes.**

 **Notable features: Green eyes, very uncommon.**

 **Subject found split into 4 pieces at home in the downtown district. Body parts removed and transferred to morgue for further investigation.**

 **[ Edit mode: On ]**

Carl swallowed hard at reading the poor girl's fate, he considered himself lucky to not have lost any limbs. He reached behind the backrest of his wheelchair and fished out a water bottle, he quickly chugged about half the bottle's contents to keep his breakfast at bay. Bosede and the chief of police wouldn't be happy if they returned with a report stating 'evidence destroyed by lynx-barf'.

Carl was about to close the lid on the laptop when a final folder caught his eye, 'Tim Wolford'. He glanced around him, Judy was wiping up some blood with a cotton swab while Nick was balancing a pen on his nose, the coast was clear.

 **[Enter password: ]**

"Blast!" Carl shouted. He'd been so close to get to know what Tim had been doing on that first mission, as it was probably tied to the rest of the cases.

"Nice try slick." Nick grinned. "Still classified."

Carl rolled his eyes in annoyance. "You don't have to rub it in y'know." Carl responded, trying to sound unfazed by Nick's comment.

Carl then turned his wheelchair around to face the fox and bunny that had now joined them. The fox and lynx both looked at Judy with expectant looks. She just shrugged and let out an annoyed sigh, so did everyone else.

"No luck finding any evidence?" Carl asked, but he already knew the answer.

"No luck." Judy replied before turning to the laptop, "Good to see you've read up on all the cases, well, the ones you can." She said.

She turned back to face Carl and asked him. "Found anything?"

"Guess," Carl muttered in a defeated tone, then his eyes shot up. He didn't find anything new, but noticed something about the all the cases, a pattern.

"So, a no?" Judy guessed, perplexed by the lynx's sudden change of mood.

"I didn't find anything!" Carl shouted happily, this made both Nick and Judy very confused, maybe they'd released him from the hospital a bit too early? "I found something old!" Carl babbled out, he snatched the laptop from the table and quickly brought up all of the cases side by side.

"Everyone targeted except Wolford works as a firefighter more or less." Carl explained while using the mouse cursor as a pointer. "And everything began when Wolford ran into that house and BOOM! Explosion!" Carl gestured with his paws.

Nick and Judy looked at each other with scared looks, the lynx in front of them didn't seem stable. But what he was saying did make some sense actually.

"Then yours truly saved Wolford and got into the newspaper! The next day at that school I was mailed a bomb!" Carl held out a digit to silence any questions while taking a breath so that he could continue babble.

"And then it was that truck that blew up! I bet there were someone working for either the ZPD or the ZPFD in one of those cars nearby!" Carl gasped for air, that rant had taken the breath out of him, literally.

"So what you're saying is," Nick began while holding his head trying to grasp what the lynx had just said. "This mammal is out for blood and is targeting police officers and firefighters with nail-bombs and chooses his or her targets by looking at the news?" It sounded absurd, but it wasn't like they had much more to go of off.

Judy quickly opened another file and tapped away.

 **Prime Suspect**

 **Name: Unknown**

 **Age: Unknown**

 **Species: Unknown**

 **Sex: Unknown**

 **Occupation: Unknown**

 **Description: N/A**

 **Notable features: N/A**

 **Addendum: Apparently likes to "tinker". Noted to have hired other criminals to steal supplies for him/her, assumed to be for manufacturing bombs.**

 **Appears to target employees of the ZPD and ZPFD.**

 **[Edit mode: On]**

Satisfied with the small bit of extra info, no matter how small it was, the trio then looked at each other with confused looks once more. That was until Carl's phone buzzed, he picked it up. It was Houston that was calling.

"What's up?" Carl greeted him.

"Nothing much, just wanted to let you know that those kids who I was posing with in the news have sent me a package!" Houston sounded happy.

Carl's pupils turned into two small dots when he heard the word 'package'.

"HOUSTON DON'T" Carl screamed at the top of his lungs, shocking both Nick and Judy where they stood.

"Geez, calm down, there's only a bunch of drawings in there." Houston told Carl in a confused tone. "I doubt a package the size of an A4 paper could be dangerous." He chuckled.

Carl's mouth hang agape. He was still in shock. A burst of laughter could be heard emerging from his phone. "I wish I could see your face right now!"

oooooo

"I wish I could see your face right now!" Houston said in between laughs, he wiped a tear from his eye before looking through the small stack of drawings he'd gotten, all of them were addressed to 'Mr. Horse'. He smiled warmly at this, he was happy that he'd helped the children forget the horror they've must have gone through in that massive car crash.

He felt like every positive action he did redeemed him, if only just a little bit. He hoped that all his positive actions would help him forgive himself for what he'd done as a youth. He pushed those thoughts away and listened to the voice on the phone.

"You scared the crap out of me! Don't you joke about that ever!" the lynx on the phone kept ranting on about how reckless it had been of Houston to pull that prank.

"You owe me a pizza for that! The good kind with tuna on it and-" Carl's voice on the phone vanished much to Houston's confusion, he had heard his angry rant loud and clear just a second ago.

"-AAAAH-" It came and went just like that.

"Ha ha, very funny, you ain't fooling me Carl!" Houston grinned.

No response.

His grin faded.

"Carl?" He looked up and noticed that the call had disconnected.

"Crap."

 **A/N: Action! Wohoo! Oh wait, that's next episode? Shit! I messed up the timeline!**

 ***Flashes away***

 **Also, I have to agree with TheFerret23 when you mentioned that the M.A.S.H theme fits in with this story, I gave it a listen and yeah, yeah it does. Kinda cool, didn't do that on purpose but hey, it works!**


	19. Alone

**A/N:** **Is it me or are these getting better in quality? Must be my imagination!**

* * *

 **"HOUSTON DON'T!"** Carl screamed at the top of his lungs, shocking both Nick and Judy where they stood. They looked at each other and then back at the feline in front of them, he was furious, Nick didn't know why but Judy could hear both parts of the conversation loud and clear. It would have been funny were it not for everything happening right now.

Carl's face faded from furious to an annoyed glare. And after Houston laughed out loud on the phone his face switched to a look that screamed 'ugh'. Carl was always up for a good joke but some things you just shouldn't joke about, a terrorist mailing bombs to mammals was one such thing.

Judy's ears twitched slightly then angled themselves to something coming from the entrance. A second later Nick heard it too, Carl would have heard it if he wasn't busy lecturing Houston about when and when not to pull a prank like that.

Judy motioned Nick to follow her, they were just about to exit the kitchen they were in when they could hear an audible 'thunk' and a following deeper 'thud'. They looked outside to find officer McHorn knocked out cold by his cruiser. They nodded to each other and pulled out their tranquilizers, they split up with Judy going on the left, towards the ZPFD van and Nick to the right, around the ZPD cruiser to see if someone was hiding behind.

Meanwhile Carl had just finished his long-distance roast. "You owe me a pizza for that! The good kind with tuna and-" He stopped, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. It had looked like a dark and blurry mass. Fear started to fill his veins, he was in a wheelchair, he was vulnerable, and he was alone. He sniffed the air around him, he could smell nothing, the smoke from his assassination attempt had really done a number on him.

Shakily bringing his phone up to his ears he was about to tell Houston that something is not right here.

' **THUNK'** Out of nowhere the black figure had pounced upon him and had hit him with a loose piece of wood in the guts, Carl screamed.

oooooo

" **AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"** Both Nick and Judy flinched when they heard the scream, they had both been on edge the whole time. Judy wasted no time and keyed her radio.

Nick on the other hand started sprinting towards the entrance of the house, that was until the entrance to the villa erupted in flames. He turned back to look at Judy, her reaction was the same, shock.

"There's no way we can get in through there!" Judy pointed towards the flames engulfing the entrance.

"Very observant, Carrots." Nick replied.

"NOT NOW NICK!"

oooooo

"What!?" The mysterious figure shouted out in surprise.

Carl grunted with pain, it was bad enough to try and use those muscles, let alone to get a plank of wood smacked into them.

The voice grew increasingly agitated. "You should have died! Died! I saw to it! You were gonna die!" The voice spat out at Carl that was frantically looking around the kitchen, he didn't see the figure anywhere, he looked down at the floor trying to find his telephone. Just his luck, it was broken, he wished that he had his dad's old Pawkia 3650.

The kitchen was dimly lit, all the lights had been busted by the nailbomb that had been the doom for the unfortunate girl that had lived here. Nick and Judy were nowhere to be found, he decided to try and stall his unknown assailant by the only means he had left, words.

"Real brave of you to attack a mammal in a wheelchair asshole!" Carl yelled out towards the doorway of the kitchen, he tried to silence his laboured breathing, it was hard but he managed to cool it down enough so that whoever was trying to mess with him couldn't pinpoint his location, not that it would do much help. He was a sitting duck.

As silently as mammaly possible he slowly rolled his wheelchair up to Nick and Judy's case, it was a deep blue with polished metal edges, the words 'ZPD' were displayed in bold white on the case. 'Click, click' the latches popped open, the top was lifted upwards and revealed the contents of the case. All that was inside was a flashlight, a backup radio and some more papers. Carl grabbed the backup radio and flashlight and examined the radio, unlike the police's and the firefighters' black radios this one was a very prominent orange.

The flashlight felt more like a pocket light to Carl, it was probably Judy's by the looks of it, it glimmered in the few rays of light that came from the construction lamp that was set up on a tripod, polished aluminum did look pretty nice. He pocketed his pocket light, heh, and began to fiddle with the radio. It wasn't the same radio as the firefighters used, this one was much more round with rubber edges, the controls were located differently on it too.

This was only aided by the fact that it was so small that he could barely hold it. It was only now that he realized that the mysterious figure had not attacked him or even said another word, maybe he had left?

'THUMP' Carl heard something behind him, trying to look like he hadn't heard anything Carl calmly reached into his pocket and fished out a small bottle of pills, he took two of them and ate them, this was going to hurt.

He stood up quickly and pushed his wheelchair towards the masked figure, whoever it was he or she was much bigger than him, they were more on the size of a lion, not that Carl could tell, they were covered from top to toe in black clothes. Not even their eyes were visible as they had sunglasses on.

Both the painkillers and the adrenaline made the previously handicapped lynx not feel a thing, not for right now that was. He ducked out of the way as the plank of burnt wood was headed for his head, instead it slammed into the wall behind him, a loud crack and crunch could be heard. Carl ducked down low and headed for the exit.

"Aw crap." Carl mumbled as he noticed that his only escape option was out of the picture. He didn't know what his unknown attacker's motives were, and he didn't intend on finding out.

He worked up some courage and just as his masked foe turned to enter the hall Carl sprinted towards them and charge tackled them, hearing the thump of his shoulder striking them squarely in the stomach felt satisfying, he wasn't all that happy for violence, but like hell if he wasn't going to go down without a fight. As the black-clothed mammal laid there on his or her back Carl quickly stood up and ran towards the bedroom. When he was inside he noticed that there was a lock for the door, he quickly locked it and let out a sigh of relief, he was safe.

'BANG' The hinges on the doors creaked in protest at someone slamming their full body against it. 'BANG'. And again.

There were no windows, not other exit, Carl didn't know what to do, then he remembered Houston and him going on about Jack Savage and all the genius ways he'd use to get away from the bad guys. None of that applied to Carl, he wasn't some made up action hero. He remembered Houston talking about a Jack Savage comic book, and how Jack had escaped by hiding a set of lockpicks in his mouth, it had sounded like such bullsh*t back then.

Carl looked regretfully at the little radio.

'If nothing it will give the guys dissecting me a good laugh.' He thought grimly, death had not struck his thoughts yet, but he was a firefighter after all, there were only two ways you left this service, you quit, or you died.

oooooo

"Give me a boost!" Judy commanded Nick who had put his paws into a makeshift step for Judy to put her foot on.

"One, two, three!" Judy shouted and Nick obliged, mustering all the strength the had he helped launch the bunny up into the air and onto the roof. Looking up he saw her giving him a thumbs up.

"Good throw!" She told Nick in a happy tone. That happy tone faded when she heard sounds of an intense struggle that was quickly silenced by a thunk. She looked over the edge to the other side of the house and saw a black figure sprinting away from the scene with someone over their shoulder.

"Nick! On the other side! Someone's kidnapping Carl!" She announced with a tone of urgency, it was hard trying to maintain your calm when someone was being kidnapped right in front of you, even more so if it was someone you sort of knew.

Hurrying around to the other side of the house he could see the black figure running through someone's garden. They were much bigger than him, he quickly radioed to Judy while continuing to chase down the suspect.

"Suspect appears to some sort of large feline! Heading west!"

"Backup's on the way Nick!" Judy's voice came back over the radio. He glanced up to see that the large mammal had turned right into a sidestreet. Quickly readying his tranquilizer he rounded the corner, he saw the dark and masked figure violently slam the lynx into the trunk of a sedan before closing it. Nick fired his gun, the dart zipped through the air and slammed into the glass on the back of the car, swearing to himself he keyed his radio once more.

"They're in a grey sedan! They've got that lynx in the trunk!" Nick reported before loading another dart, the car slowly backed out of the sidestreet, Nick had a perfect shot of the driver. 'Pfft' his gun let out a quiet puff of air, he looked underneath at the 'magazine', no pressure left. He had not loaded it with a new CO2 Cartridge this morning, after all, this was just an investigation.

The weather was still gray with a light drizzle, much like when they had arrived at the scene. It showed no sign of clearing up anytime soon, as much as people protested Zootopia still had scheduled rain-days in every ecosystem. Some ecosystems had these scheduled more often than others, but every 'region' had a rainy day at least once every month. The notable exception being sahara square, they only had rain once every year, that's when the desert transformed into a lush meadow for a short week*.

Nick had to dive to the side as the sedan tried to run him over, the screeching of the tires could be heard from a block away. It took of, Nick could only stand there and watch.

"Come in Nick, did you get them?" Judy's anticipating voice came over the radio.

Glumly Nick brought the radio up to his muzzle.

"I'm sorry Carrots."

* * *

 **A/N: Oooh! This is getting intense!**

 **I overcame a writer's block today, I'm proud over that, I'm also proud to have found a path to take this story down!**

 **Please, leave a review, words mean so much more than statistics and numbers on a spreadsheet.**

 **That is all,**

 **Until next time.**


	20. Coordinates received

**A/N: Hooray! I've reached chapter 20! Mainly because these chapters are bite-sized, but it allows me to get them out semi-daily. Hopefully my sanity can keep up with this.**

 **Without further ado.**

 **Also by radio I meant walkie talkie in the previous chapter if anyone got confused.**

"Agh." Carl gasped as he awoke once more. He tried to sit up but both the pain it caused and something preventing him from sitting up quickly changed his thoughts. He had been knocked unconscious again, he frowned, this was starting to become a recurring theme.

His eyes adjusted to the darkness, even with nightvision he couldn't see anything, even mammals with night vision actually need some bit of light to make out anything. His head was pounding, he gently rubbed the aching back of his head, he could feel a lump there now.

He tried to remember, everything had happened so fast, the masked figure had broke down the door and attacked him, he had tried to put up a fight in vain. Desperately shielding his head before something had hit him violently in the back of the head. The next thing he knew he was someplace dark.

He put up both his paws to the "roof" of whatever box or container he had been tossed inside. With a muffled growl of pain he tried to force it open. He pushed hard, face grinning in pain. He let out a huge sigh and gave up.

"Sounds like he's awake." He heard a masculine voice adress someone else. It was hard to make out anything the other said. 'Probably on the phone.' Carl theorized.

With that the trunk of the car popped open, the figure looking down at Carl was still masked, but based on his voice Carl had decided it was a he. It was only logical. Carl shielded his eyes as the figure shone a bright flashlight into his eyes, it stopped Carl from reacting to what came next.

The figure punched Carl right on the snout and then proceeded to blindfold him, Carl let out a pained yelp. "You scream, you're dead." The deep voice threatened him. Carl, being not very fond of dying at the hands of a mysterious kidnapper did the wise thing and stayed silent. Under the blindfold his eyes darted around, trying to see anything at the edges of the cloth.

It had been morning by the time he was kidnapped, now it seemed to be evening. 'How long was I out?' Carl asked himself. He was forcibly sat up, letting out a dry wheeze at the pain it caused, the painkillers had worn out by now, every step felt like he got stabbed in the gut with a rusty, serrated spoon that dug deeper every time.

He was pushed forward by his captor, startled by this Carl took a quick step forward, the pain was almost unbearable, and it seemed whoever had taken him enjoyed to watch him suffer. He staggered forward.

"You're faking it, I saw you run without a wheelchair before!" The harsh voice spat at him.

"Painkillers and adrenaline does help with that," Carl quipped. He was answered by a punch in his back. He strained himself not to let out a sound at being hit. Carl pushed his luck, "do you have some by chance?" Carl asked with a smug smile.

"I don't usually take pred jobs but I see why my contractor wanted you dead so badly." The imposing figure behind him let out a deep sigh.

Carl swallowed, 'great, someone wants me dead.' His ears tilted and spun around everywhere trying to pick up some type of sound, he could hear distant sirens and other sounds of the city. Not a whole lot to go off of.

He was pushed once more, he fell face first onto hard concrete, "AAGH-" someone slapped a piece of duct tape onto his muzzle, the figure easily picked the lynx back up and sat him down onto what felt like and must have been a chair, he could hear and feel as someone taped his arms and legs to the chair.

He started to panic.

Oooooo

It was getting late, after the mysterious mammal had kidnapped Carl Nick and Judy had combed every block in the vicinity without finding anything. Judy was about to pack up her things and leave for today when she noticed something was missing.

"Nick, look here." Judy waved Nick over to their ZPD case that they had brought with them to the crime scene. The case was still open and Nick looked into it and then back to Judy.

"What?" He raised an eyebrow. Nothing seemed out of place.

"The backup radio has been stolen!" Judy pointed towards the foam-cutout in the form of a small handheld walkie talkie.

Nick mouthed 'o' much like Clawhauser was known to do. "We can track that!"

Judy gave him a smug look, "Sly bunny, dumb fox."

Nick simply rolled his eyes and let out a happy 'ugh'. He and Judy walked back over to their cruiser and radioed for Bogo.

"Hopps, Wilde." He greeted in his usual voice.

"Chief! I believe we found a lead!" Judy exclaimed happily.

"Good, please elaborate." Bogo said, he sounded a bit more relaxed now, which meant that he was ecstatic if you were to believe all the cops at the precinct.

"Our backup radio was stolen! And as you know we can track it!" Judy explained.

"Good, I have to go, important business." He stated before disconnecting.

oooooo

"I knew it was a good idea to place gps trackers in everything the ZPD owned!" An ecstatic chipmunk said gleefully, her plan to put a tracker in everything was actually going to be helpful!

Judy sheepishly smiled back, carefully she took the small GPS-tracker that the chipmunk had got them.

Nick raised an eyebrow and his mouth tugged at a smile when he saw the size of the GPS, it was small, even for Judy.

"I don't mean to be rude but, do you have one in our size?" Judy motioned towards her and Nick, to which the chipmunk responded by waving them off, "Just slot it into your GPS in the patrol car."

"Oh." Judy mouthed, 'that's why I never found a phone adapter that fit' she thought for herself, Nick was going to tease her with this forever now.

She saw it, the smug smile on his lips, "Do you have a phone adapter for it too by chance?" He asked while looking over at Judy, his smug smile still there until he was caught off guard.

"Yeah, here!" The chipmunk leapt over to a drawer and used her full body to open it just enough for her to squeeze through. A second later the hole drawer opened and she came back with just what Nick had asked for, an adapter for attaching your phone in the place where the tiny GPS was supposed to fit.

Now the tables had turned.

oooooo

"Hey look at that." Nick said in a happily surprised tone, the tiny GPS fit inside the bigger one like a russian doll. Judy pulled it out again and brought up a form that they kept in the passenger box along with the rest of the forms they had to fill out for all their equipment.

"Emergency radio, custom-size." Judy read out loud, "Ah! Tracking ID" she grinned happily, they finally had a solid lead on this case. Tapping in the code on the small GPS she pressed 'begin search' on it and then put it back into it's larger counterpart. The information transferred seamlessly from the smaller screen to the bigger screen.

Both their eyes lit up as they saw a small red ping pop up on their GPS, it was weak, but it was there.

Nick noticed a smaller button on the small GPS that read 'ping'. Being curious he pressed it.

"Hey!" Judy slapped Nick's paw away from the GPS. "We don't know what that does." She scowled Nick.

Nick replied in his usual manner, "Now we do, No need to thank me Carrots."

oooooo

*Blip*

"What was that?" The masculine voice asked no one in particular.

Carl kept quiet, not like he had a choice anyway. He still had his blindfold on, the only senses that had not been robbed from him was his ears, touch and albeit weak nose, smoke tends to damage that pretty badly. 'I've almost died more times this week than my entire life combined!' Carl realized.

The figure grumbled before sitting down again, at least that is what it sounded like.

"...bad catnip… ...no quality nowadays…" was all he could make out of the almost incoherent mumblings that his captor kept on spouting out.

'Death by catnip-addicted violent kidnapper for hire doesn't sound very catchy on a tombstone.' Carl glumly thought to himself.

He heard a ringtone before someone picked it up. "Yeah, it got him, alive as you wished." Carl couldn't make out what the other part.

"They're coming for you now, And it ain't gonna be pretty, so i'll leave you here." The masked figure said, and with that they left.

Carl was alone, but not for long…

 **A/N: Any feedback is great.**

 **Btw, Wolford is back at the precinct and sends his best wishes, only paperwork for him for a week now.**


	21. Pain

**A/N: Phew, looking back I can't believe this fic has survived for this long. It feels so crazy to me, anyways let's get on with it, the plot thickens here a bit and yadda yadda.**

 _ **NOTICE!**_ **This chapter contains some pretty brutal imagery, not on level with B level horror movies but pretty brutal nonetheless, in no way do I write this because I enjoy the acts that are portrayed, It's purely for the sake of the story. If you're offended by blood, torture and all that other nasty stuff i'd recommend you skip this chapter, there will be a short summary of it in the next chapter.**

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 **On a** _ **COMPLETELY**_ **unrelated note (not): I'm considering bumping the story up to M rating, but hopefully this is just a one-of-a-kind chapter. Let me know if It's necessary.**

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 **You have been warned.**

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 **Still here? Enjoy on your own risk then! *Thumbs up***

When the mercenary or whatever he called himself left the only things that remained were Carl and his thoughts. A lingering feeling of dread spread throughout him. His fate was not yet decided, but it felt as if everything would eventually lead to the same end. Taking a few deep breaths he pondered about if he was going to heaven or hell. He recoiled in shock and disgust, had he really given up that easily? Sure, he wasn't the end all be all of brave mammals, but he had promised himself not to be a wimp.

He tried to lift his arms, yep, still duct-taped. The mercenary was nice enough to at least leave his clothes be, his jeans, t-shirt and ZPFD-bomber jacket were still intact. But both his phone, money and radio he had on him had either been stolen or destroyed, what the merc didn't know was that Carl still had the backup radio. It was pretty useless seeing as one, he was duct taped to a chair and two, he couldn't get to it. The wait was excruciating, Carl's internal clock told him it was night.

"So it's true what he said." a voice emanated behind Carl, causing him to shudder.

"What?" Carl asked carefully.

"You ARE the first victim I… dealt with." Strange, Carl thought, the voice sounded almost, feminine. Carl held his tongue.

"That was my first field test." Carl didn't need to see their face to tell that they were smiling while mentioning 'field test'. The mammal carried on, "You see the mark-one was far inferior from the mark-two, still, I thought you would have died from your injuries." The calm voice grew a tad bit agitated when they said 'would'.

"Wh-who are you?" Carl asked in a shaky voice.

There was a long pause before he felt something tug at the end of his blindfold before it fell from his eyes and landed on his lap. He had to blink a couple of times to adjust his eyes, they were in a hollowed out apartment, no furniture was present except for the chair he was strapped in. The walls were a neutral white while the floor was a dusty gray, the only source of light was a naked lightbulb hanging from a cord in the ceiling.

The voice snickered, "I suppose you'll be dead by then so why not allow you to see the face of your killer." Carl felt something sharp drag across his back, it wasn't cutting deep but it was painful nonetheless.

His face was violently grabbed by a paw that then forced him to look sharply to the left, what he saw shocked him. It was a vixen, wearing nothing glamorous, just a work-overall and heavy duty boots in the appropriate size. She grinned at him, "What? Did you expect some manly grizzly bear or something?"

Carl was at a loss of words, the mysterious killer that had mailed his colleagues bombs, blown up a truck in the middle of the city, almost killed a class full of children and hired someone to kidnap an investigator was right in front of him. Carl's jaw worked up and down but not a single word came out.

"I know, it's perfect, no one expects little me." She said mockingly while walking back behind Carl's back again. He could hear her rifle through various items, almost all of them sounded metallic. He managed to get his brain working again, he had so many questions he wanted answered, but he wasn't in a position to bargain.

"Why?" One word, yet it could give you so much in return.

"Revenge." She muttered as she returned from behind the chair, she carried a toolbox with her, Carl gulped at the sight of the toolbox, he had watched enough movies to know what was going to happen.

"Y-You're going to torture me?" Carl stuttered. The panic grew inside of him like a water balloon that was being overfilled, it would soon burst. He was tough, at least that's what he told himself, but he could only take so much.

"Well," She smiled spitefully, "You could have died quickly and painlessly before, you leave me no choice." She told him feigning a sorrowful tone. 'She definitely isn't stable!' Carl's mind screamed for him to run, he rocked violently back and forth in chair resulting in her laughing at him. He was properly scared, fires were scary, but with fires you could predict what it would do, this was Carl's worst fear, something dangerous that he couldn't predict.

She opened the toolbox and picked up a knife, she examined it closely before nodding. She walked up to him and slowly and gruesomely stick it in his thigh. Carl didn't scream, he only let out a small yelp and a tear.

She walked back over to her toolbox while speaking, "It began five years ago, I was a happy mother with a wonderful husband and two kits." She picked up a hammer and grinned when she saw Carl's terrified reaction.

"We were living in a house, nothing fancy, but we were happy." She gave the tool a few test swings into the air before setting her eyes on the lynx again.

"Then some BIGOTED pred-hating mammals decided that my life wasn't worth living and set our house on fire." She swung the hammer into Carl's upper left arm, Carl winced and let out a small wheeze.

"Why are you doing this to me? I didn't do anything!" Carl cried out. If she had a reasoning for it Carl failed to see it.

"SHUT UP, I'm not at the best part yet!" She shouted at his face while swinging the hammer into the same spot again. Letting out a sigh she continued, "When the firefighters arrived I was the only one that made it out, I kept telling them what had happened but they didn't listen. My family died and I was locked away for three years on account for arson!" She let out a quiet sob before staring back at Carl, her eyes showed no remorse, only pure hatred for what she saw.

She dropped the hammer and rifled through the different tools at her disposal, "Sharp or blunt?" She asked Carl who was ready to pass out at this point. "Neither." He answered to which he got a chuckle in return.

"Now I know it's only a matter of time before I get found out, and you being alive proves to me that my current tactics are, flawed." She let the pause drag out, from one moment to the next she switched from doing things based on emotion to looking at it like a tactician would do over a battle. It scared Him, really scared him.

She stood up and produced more knifes, Carl recoiled and tried to swing his chair back and forth, it did nothing to improve his chances but a part of his brain still believed he could break free, it was the instinct that had kept his ancestors alive during fight or flight situations. Lazily throwing them the majority of them struck him with the handle, much to his relief. One had managed to lodge itself near his right shoulder however, from all the pain that he'd been through this almost didn't register, which was pretty horrible if you thought about it, twenty two years old, on the job for two days before having someone make an attempt at your life, four days later he finds himself strapped to a chair going through torture.

"Too bad you won't live to see the city hall erupt in flames," She smiled at him.

Through pained grunts Carl objected, "I thought you targeted police officers and firefighters!"

"Police? No, although that was a happy coincidence, You see it will be a lot like an electric bug trap on a porch, the firefighters will go into the building and then, Boom!" She exclaimed happily gesturing with her hands like a giant explosion would occur.

"You're insane!" Carl growled, if he was going to die he was not going to die a wimp.

The vixen didn't even deny it, she smirked and proceeded to get a bottle of water from her toolbox. "I have always wondered if water leaks out if you poke a hole in mammals." She grinned manically.

"Stay away from me!" Carl shouted with all the remaining power he had left.

oooooo

"We're closing in on the signal!" Judy mentioned as she took a right into a smaller and less used road in the downtown area.

"Yeah." Nick stated coldly while checking his tranquilizer, fully pressurized. Loading a dart into it the holstered it and looked towards the GPS. They were indeed closing in on the little red dot.

They decided to park their cruiser a block away, they would sneak up the rest of the way. It was now night and the streetlights slowly lit up around them, Judy told Clawhauser over the radio to keep a patrol on alert should they find anything. Once Clawhauser had responded with 'okey dokey!' they proceeded to move silently but with purpose towards the apartment complex.

It looked like a concrete block from the outside, it was showing signs of mold and deterioration. The lower level windows were all fitted with iron bars, almost every window had curtains hiding what was inside. This was a bad part of town, not everything in zootopia was as glamorous as it was made out to be.

Judy poked Nick and showed him the GPS they had detached from their cruiser, he nodded with a look on his face that told Judy he was in full cop-mode. It was not often wore his ballistic vest, but when he you knew it was a serious situation. Judy would never admit it but she thought Nick looked pretty nice in his vest, it was a special order made just for him, since they had never had any other fox officers. It easily covered his entire torso area, although it protected him he felt pretty clumsy in it.

"Do we even have a warrant for this?" Nick questioned Judy to which he got an annoyed look in return, "It took us half a day to get a warrant for a mining site, we don't have that time!" She looked back at the GPS before handing it to Nick. Groaning and rolling his eyes he clipped int onto his vest and followed Judy, the apartment doors were locked by an old keylock Nick went up and examined it before producing a smell set of lockpicks much to Judy's surprise and distaste.

"Way to push the stereotype, Slick." She said, he gave her a smug smile in return before answering, "I lost my keys to my locker on the first day, also, how did you think I got that box of chocolate into your locker?" He wiggled his eyebrows.

"You broke into my locker?" Judy gasped trying to keep herself quiet, they were still on a mission.

Nick continued to work with the antique three-pin tumbler lock while still deflecting her accusations, "Only to leave you an anniversary gift!" He defended before taking on the offensive, "I didn't see you give me anything. Judy huffed, "I would give you a gift for you hustling me?" Judy said a bit offended before calming down, "look, let's deal with this later, how's the lock coming?"

Nick agreed with her and told her that he'd finished it and pushed the door open, "Tadaa!"

"Um, how do we know which one of these rooms the radio's in?" Nick asked Judy who was deep in thought on just that subject. "Try raising the volume on the radio and then talk through it?" It sounded more like a question than a suggestion.

Nick cleared his throat before putting on his best impression of Chief Bogo. "I'm going to put you on parking duty indefinitely just because I can, also I like gazelle but won't admit it even though everyone already knows!" Nick finished and then they both went completely silent trying to make anything out.

Nick could hear a distant sound, it sounded like someone dropping a small stone onto a piece of wood or something in that fashion, but to Judy it was all the more clear, she could hear a thunk and then a pained growl.

Judy readied her tranquilizer almost robotically, she'd done it so many times it was like a reflex. Nick followed suit and raced after her as the sound of struggle became clearer to him as well.

oooooo

"Let's see, we've done wrench, pipe, knives, a bit of poking with nails, water." The crazed vixen sounded like someone who was listing chores that needed to be done. Carl's head was drooped low, barely functioning, and when his sobs and pained breaths had been too much she'd taped his muzzle again.

'I better get an express pass to the pearly gates for this.' He thought grimly to himself.

His thoughts on the afterlife and her ramblings of torture methods were interrupted as they both could hear a muffled voice coming from Carl's direction. "What was that?" She shouted angrily. Then they both heard it again, it sounded like chief bogo.

Maybe Carl had finally gone insane, the voice seemed so close yet so distant, then he remembered the radio. "YOU!" She pointed at Carl with an unwitnessed fury, "THEY PLANTED A BUG ON YOU!" She shouted before grabbing a pipe wrench she tipped the chair over with a force Carl didn't know a mammal of her size was capable of, his muffled growls was the only thing he could produce as the vixen beat his chest with the wrench repeatedly.

"ZPD FREEZE!" Judy bellowed louder than what anybody in the room would have expected from the lapine. Her aim was trained on the vixen who held the wrench up high ready to swing.

"A STEP CLOSER AND I'LL CRACK HIS HEAD OPEN LIKE AN EGG" Her maddened scream pierced their ears, it sounded pained and desperate, like a trapped animal ready to fight or flee.

Judy carefully tracked her as she lifted Carl's chair up and took cover behind it. Nick was standing outside the room and were calling for backup, after hearing Clawhauser saying that it was on it's way he swung around and saw what Judy saw.

"Of all the mammals in zootopia..." Nick trailed off. He didn't know what to say, no snarky remark or witty comeback.

Vision blurry, head pounding, Carl couldn't make out anything that was happening, a blur and a slightly larger blur had entered and then he'd been sat up? He couldn't tell.

"Take cover!" Judy urged Nick just in time for him to to be inches away from being pinned to the wall by a homemade nail gun.

It was horrible, For the first time Judy didn't know what to do. Sure, she'd encountered a lot of armed perps but not someone who was using someone else as cover, the darts she and Nick had loaded weren't lethal, they had to take a chance.

"Enjoy the Mark three beta!" the vixen laughed as she tossed a inconspicuous opaque bottle, it gave of a quiet ticking, other than that it didn't have any discernable features.

While Nick and Judy were focused on the bomb the vixen who still had not given them a name made a hasty exit through a window, she slid down a rain-pipe and out into the night…

"OH SHIT!" Nick yelled while pointing at the makeshift bomb lying in front of them, wasting to time Judy quickly got an idea. "Take of your vest!" She urged Nick while beginning to take of her own chestplate as well.

"WHAT?" Nick thought that Judy had lost her mind. "Trust me!" Was all he got in return.

"Oh." He soon realized what Judy intended to do with the kevlar, she took her chestplate and put it over the bomb with Nick following suit. They both put their full weight on the bottle and waited, it was the worst kind of waiting, they didn't even know if this was going to work!

The explosion was, quiet, too quiet, because there were no explosion.

"That's a good hustle." Nick had to admit, it had been pretty convincing the way she'd made the bottle out to be an actual bomb, inside it was a small speaker that she'd probably salvaged from a toy.

"Yeah yeah," Judy waved it off sounding let down, they'd lost their prime suspect over a dud. At least they saved the hostage, well, whatever was left of him. Nick took a quick look at the GPS, it showed that the signal was were they were. Nick once again pressed the 'Ping' button much to Judy's disapproval, they could hear a muffled 'Blip' coming from the half-conscious lynx.

"Where…" Judy didn't finish the sentence as she slapped her paws over her mouth, eyes tearing up.

Carl was a mess, and that's saying it nicely. The vixen hadn't bothered with removing the two knives that were still stuck into Carl like a pincushion. There were also several nails in both his arms, luckily they had not been hammered into him all the way.

Judy carefully grabbed hold of the handle of one of the knives, the one in his thigh to be specific, he only let out a small groan when she finally pulled it out with a gut-wrenching 'schlit'. Nick proceeded to yank out the other knife that was stuck just beneath his shoulder.

They quietly removed all the nails and such that was stuck in him, they carefully cut the duct tape and laid him down on the floor. A while later backup arrived and called for backup, Nick and Judy had done the best they could with the small personal first-aid kits they were issued. It barely stopped the blood from leaking out of him like a leaky faucet.

oooooo

"Hey look! He's waking up!" A voice that sounded distant seemingly felt like it got closer, waking up on medical stretchers had seemed to become a bad habit for Carl.

"I got to tell you you're pretty smart at being dumb." Nick said in an amused tone.

"What?" Carl slurred in a confused tone. His head still had a slight ache to it but other then that he felt pretty nice, a warm feeling had spread throughout his body, he felt _very_ nice.

"The radio," Nick had to pause for a second to choke a laugh he had. "Ah man, how did you even come up with that idea?" Nick sounded amazed by the stupidity he was witnessing.

It suddenly hit Carl, the radio, his foolproof plan of hiding it inside himself. He let out an embarrassed groan. "Please don't tell." He pleaded to the fox.

"Don't worry," Nick reassured him, "Although I will have to write it in the report, and I can't prevent other officers from reading those reports. Carl slapped a paw over his face, 'just perfect' was all that he could come up with.

"You'll have to explain the x-ray pictures yourself though! See ya!" Nick gave him a smug grin before shutting the ambulance doors.

"No wait-" the doors were shut and the ambulance sped off, Nick happily waved the ambulance away before losing the smug grin, he kicked an empty soda can while walking back to the apartment complex turned crime scene.

oooooo

" , while the blunt force trauma and stab wounds will heal within a few days that is not our primary concern." A gopher paramedic explained to the lynx while turning a computer monitor so that Carl could see, "This is a foreign object sir, do you know how it got there."

'I'd rather die right now.' Said the self-aware part of his brain.

But had to rush through this, that crazy vixen had escaped and was still out there, and she'd made a mistake, she'd let Carl live, by accident or no he still knew her plans now.

Now he had to hope that they had enough time before she get to work with it.

 **A/N: Poor Carl! Why him? Because it's a story! Anyways, yeah, let's hope he recovers before the big boom.**


	22. Trippy

**A/N: I doubt anyone did not read the last chapter but I keep my promises.**

 **After Nick and Judy had ran outside to check on some suspicious noise Judy had heard outside Carl was left alone inside the building. It turned out a mammal for hire had been sent to kidnap Carl. The mammal is successful in his mission but not before Carl in a moment of panic takes advice from a spy movie and forces a radio down his throat like a dumbass.**

 **Judy notices that their radio is gone and with help from a custom tracker is able to trace Carl to his location. Meanwhile inside the apartment complex Carl has been tortured and all that stuff, Nick and Judy arrive just in time to prevent the murderer, a crazed vixen from delivering the finishing blow.**

 **After being hauled off in an ambulance Carl now finds himself once again inside the hospital, luckily for him they removed the radio while he was under, this is where the story returns here.** _ ***Points down***_

"He's ready to see you now." A nurse helpfully told Nick and Judy who had been waiting outside in the lobby of the hospital. This seemed to be a common recurrence.

"Thanks." Nick gave a short reply before following Judy inside. A lot had been on his mind since they encountered the mammal that was responsible for two dead and countless injured.

They quietly entered the small white and featureless room. The air smelled of antiseptic and paper. Facing the door was a standard hospital bed, the kind that can be folded up to help patients sit up. A lynx was currently occupying it. He wasn't looking as bad as he used to, his face had the same distant stare that he had when they first saw him.

"Hey guys." He gave them a weak wave and smile, all the power that he had left had seemed to drain from him, he blamed it on the adrenaline rush stopping. Letting out a chuckle he spoke, "I should get a discount on hospital visits, considering how often i've been in here." This earned him a smile from both Judy and Nick.

"Since you're employed by zootopia and work as a firefighter the healthcare is free." Judy explained. Nick nodded, then froze when he looked into Carl's eyes. A smug grin spread across his face, he quickly tapped the radio on his belt.

"Don't want to talk about it." Carl sighed, Judy looked confused and turned to face Nick, he shrugged and gave her a face that said 'what?', the same went for Carl. She grimaced angrily, she hated when people kept secrets from her.

She shrugged it off, she would have to talk to Nick about it later, although she thought she had a clue at what it was.

"We came to check on you and to see if you had some info on whoever was…" She looked away and silently muttered "torturing you." Nick shot her a glance, he put a paw on her shoulder and rubbed it affectionately.

Carl groaned when shuffling in the bed before answering, "Actually I do." He sounded a bit distant, like he was in deep thought or daydreaming (Aren't those the same thing really?).

"I remember her saying something about family," His gaze continued upwards into the ceiling before snapping back towards the duo, "That they were killed by a group of people that hated predators for some reason."

Nick looked with worried eyes towards Judy who did the same towards Nick, they both focused back on the lynx that was pretty high on the various medicines and painkillers. He looked distant and emotionless, no sadness, no anger.

If it weren't for the many bandages and stitches on his shaved torso and arms you wouldn't be able to guess the pain he'd gone through. Fighting back the tears she pressed on to ask him some more questions. It took him a few seconds to register that she was talking.

"She said something about fire, city hall and then a boom." His look was focused on a spot behind Judy.

Nick nudged her, "Shouldn't we wait until he sobers up before we ask anything?" He was just as concerned for Carl as Judy, but asking someone that was drugged was a gamble.

"Hey!" Carl tried sound offended but it came out as a yawn instead, he fell back into the bed. "Woah, stop spinning." He lazily commented.

"Yeah, you're right." Judy agreed.

They both turned their attention to the door they had entered slamming open, there stood Houston, and behind him Rose and Sam White, Carl's parents.

"Are you hurt!?" Houston nearly screamed, it was still loud, no one could argue against that.

"Nah." Carl tried to wave it off, but his arm only raised itself a few centimeters before limply falling back down.

"Son…" Rose walked up to her son, tears silently flowing. "What have they done to you?" She took his paw in her. He looked over to her not saying a word, he smiled, he felt comfort with his mother next to him. Sam walked up on the other side of the bed, he grabbed hold of Carl's other paw. They stood so quietly for a few minutes, Judy, Nick and Houston didn't want to ruin their moment.

"Thank you for saving him." Rose quietly said, she had kneeled down to be on the same level of Judy. Rose stood up and looked over to Sam, he had been crying as well. They sat down in one of the oversized chairs intended for elephants, silently comforting each other.

"Hey man, how you feeling?" Houston asked Carl in an optimistic tone, he wasn't crying, he wasn't going to cry. He was man!

The lynx lying in bed let out a small wheeze, he'd exhausted all his power now. Houston gave him a careful hug, his manliness be damned!

Once Houston had let go Carl had already fallen asleep. Why him? What had made him have to suffer through all of this? Fate?

Judy put on her cop-face, feeling bad for him wasn't going to solve this case and stop the criminal. Someone had to do something.

"Let's go Nick." Judy commanded Nick to follow. Carl had said something about city hall, so that was their first stop.

oooooo

"Doesn't look like there's anything odd going on here." Nick pointed out while scratching the underside of his muzzle.

Judy gave him a frustrated look, "That's because we've only been in the main lobby!" Judy dropped the glare and walked up to the reception desk. A cow was working the computer when she heard a small cough coming from in front of her.

She looked around confused, there was no one there to be seen, she heard a voice calling her from, "Down here." Judy politely added. Ignoring the confused look the cow gave her she gave her a little wave, "Hi!"

The cow shook herself before looking down again, now with tired eyes instead of shocked ones. "How may I help you?" She asked the officer, Nick was hanging back sitting at one of the benches.

"Judy Hopps, ZPD, I was wondering if you'd seen a red vixen pass through here?" Judy asked, she was let down when she got a shrug in return.

"There's tons of mammals passing through here every day, I saw a dozen vixens, could have been any of them you're looking for." The cow answered before turning back to her computer.

"No luck I assume?" Nick asked Judy as she came back to him. She let out a defeated sigh, "No luck."

They'd seen the mammal, and her… work, but they didn't have enough evidence to warrant putting extra patrols around and inside the city hall.

"Do we look around and see if we find something?" Judy more asked than suggested.

"You're the boss." Nick said while smiling at Judy.

oooooo

"Hum." Carl slowly opened his eyes. He felt heavy, but pleasant, the only other thing you could hear was the gentle hum of an A/C unit. He quickly realized something, this isn't the hospital. He tried sitting up but once again his injuries reminded him of their presence. He laid down again and twisted his head to the left, wall. He turned his head over to the right, his door was open by a crack. The memories flowed back to him, he was in his room, his own room back at his parents flat in Tundratown.

He felt the thick quilt that someone had put over him, it was so soft and heavy, taking a deep breath he took in the smell of his room, it smelled of old coffee, books and his mother, oh how he had missed her. He didn't even bother calling for attention, he wished for this moment to last just a little longer, he closed his eyes again, and drifted off…

oooooo

 **A/N: Sorry if this chapter is utter shit, I'm kinda stressed out. I'll make the next one better for sure!**


	23. Home

**A/N: Chapter Twenty Three! Wohoo!**

Carl awoke to the faint sound of cutlery being carried around, he slowly opened his eyes and felt the sunrays pouring in from his window, the curtain had been opened ever so slightly. Stretching out he felt a lot better today, the thick quilt was keeping him warm now that he had both cut his fur short and had most of it shaved for a couple surgeries and whatnot. He let out a quiet yawn and smiled to himself. His mind was fuzzy about how he'd gotten here in the first place, he tried to recall all previous events leading up to him waking up in his old room back in Tundratown.

His ears turned their focus to the slight creaking of his door being opened, once he saw who was standing there everything else didn't matter.

"Look who's awake." Rose said fondly. She held a tray in front of her, judging from the smell she'd cooked chicken noodle soup. She set the tray down carefully on the nightstand next to him, she bent over and gently stroked his head.

"Hey ma'." Carl replied tired but happy, he had probably slept for a good few hours but still felt like he had done after a training pass during the academy. She gave him a warm smile before fetching something from her pocket.

"Daniel, the nurse, he told me go give you one of these daily," Rose explained to him while presenting a small white pill. Carl quickly recognized the small pill and it's function.

"It's a-" Rose got cut off by Carl. He looked her in the eyes.

"Mom, I know what it is, i'm a qualified EMT, it's a common painkiller." He said in a reassuring voice before gratefully accepting the pill from his mother's paws.

"Looks like they turned you into a smarty pants." She noted in an amused tone.

"What can I say?" Carl chuckled lightly.

Carl turned his attention to the small pill in his hand, this type of medicine wasn't as strong as the stuff you could get in the hospital, for good reason. That brought his relaxed mind back to a question he was wondering about.

"Why am I here?" Carl asked Rose with a confused look.

Rose was taken aback by the question but quickly recovered, taking a breath she started explaining.

"After your surgery you were unconscious, and we thought that so much had happened to you, we wanted to do what any parents would have done, take care of you." She looked away for a second, blinking quickly a few times she turned her gaze back to her "little" cub. He was a few centimetres taller than her now.

"The doctors did all of the hard work, they said all you needed was rest, and so they agreed when I asked them if we could take care you at home." She continued stroking his head throughout their chat. "So now we have Daniel, a nurse that comes and checks on you daily."

"Mom." Carl said softly, his eyes interlocking with hers, they both shared the same eye colour, a dull blue and gray blend.

"Yes?" She almost whispered, giving him a gentle hug.

"Can I have some of that food? It smells delicious." He asked with a goofy grin on his face.

She chuckled before helping him sit up in bed, he could feel his mother's unrest at the sight of the many bandages and stitches covering him. She realized that he could hear her breathing become strained and quickly shot him a joke to deflate the situation.

"When you said you went for a short-furred look on furbook I didn't imagine it being this short." She said and added an amused huff to the end of her statement.

"Wow…" Carl replied dryly before resuming his tiny grin.

oooooo

"What do we say to the public?" Judy asked the enormous cape buffalo that seemingly let out an annoyed puff before turning around to address her.

"The public doesn't have to know anything until it's over! It's bad enough that they think terrorists are detonating bombs randomly around the city!" Bogo informed Judy with his harsh tone as per usual.

"But-" Judy tried to take back some ground in the argument only for her advance to be crushed by a swift counterattack from Bogo.

"But what? Letting the public know that this crazy mammal your report talks about is targeting city hall would only spread more panic! On that subject, two cops searching around city hall in broad daylight does NOT help with keeping mammals from freaking out." The chief of police scolded her.

He went on to state that the evidence they had only confirmed that Carl had been tortured, it didn't tie her to the bombings. Judy shot up and regained some hope.

"I've got a first-hand witness!" Judy told Bogo in a determined tone. This got Bogo to raise one of his eyebrows, a sign that either said 'you're stupid' or 'you're maybe not THAT stupid'. Hopefully it was the latter.

"Very well, i'd like to see a report on your findings as soon as possible." Bogo replied in a dismissive tone before the elevator doors shut with a cheery 'Ding' as it ascended to Bogo's office.

"I'll show him." Judy told herself with unwavering determination, why Bogo didn't believe her made her a tad bit annoyed, he had not believed her before during the nighthowler case, she could accept that, she had been the new recruit back then. But now when she was a Sergeant investigator being treated like this felt disrespecting.

Passing by the break room on her way the offices she could see Delgato standing next to the coffee brewer, he had been pretty down ever since his partner, Wolford, was caught in yet another explosion. Not as severe as the first one Wolford was still not ready for action. She could hear his pager go off and as soon as it finished Delgato got picked up by an urgent trunk, much to his shock.

Judy suffocated a chuckle as Francine ran past her while holding Delgato like he was carry-on baggage. She felt a little bad for him, but only a little. Francine was a bit rough around the edges, but when you got to know her she could be your best friend.

After taking in the display Judy went back to strolling towards the offices were Nick hopefully had finished the reports. They had gotten a literal stack of reports to file, Kidnapped mammal, stolen property, extreme violence to name a few. They had decided to split it fifty-fifty, but it ended up being seventy-thirty, in Judy's opinion Nick was a bit too slow when it came to paperwork, all those quick wits fell flat against a piece of papers with symbols on it. She hoped to change the percentage of sixty-forty within two months.

She entered the office and headed towards her's and Nick's cubical, since the mammal inclusion initiative had come as a bit of a surprise the ZPD had to improvise in a few areas, the two most notable being the (almost) brand new ZPD _mobile parking enforcement platform_ , or more commonly known as a three-wheeled golf cart with ZPD stickers slapped on last minute. And the second being the office cubicles, the smallest ones they had were still big enough for moderately small mammals.

Judy's side was neatly organized with nothing sticking out, she had a few photos of her family resting on the desk. Meanwhile Nick's workplace was a mess, papers laid scattered everywhere and old coffee mugs were sitting wherever there was room. Judy had started thinking that Nick kept his side of the cubical in disorder just to annoy Judy.

'At least he respects the border.' She thought positively, the border, as they called it, was were Nick's desk ended and Judy's began and vice versa. There was a line that separated the two workplaces, the difference was staggering.

Among the dust, papers, old mugs and pens with teeth markings in them sat a tired fox whose sole duty it was to announce to the world how much he resented his given tasks.

"Ah shut it Wilde." The helpful voice of Wolford called out from across the room followed by snickers and chuckles from various officers working at their own cubicles.

This had the desired effect of Nick ceasing his whining, little did they know he was still complaining quietly to himself in defiance.

"Are you done yet?" Judy asked her companion while sitting in her chair. She was surprised by his answer.

"Actually I am." He said proudly before turning his monitor slightly so that she could see. She gave him a surprised smile, "Nice."

"Don't give him too much credit now, his ego will explode if ya' do." Wolford joked while passing by them towards the exit. Judging by the cup in his paw he was probably on a refueling mission, not even getting blown up twice could stop that wolf from getting his coffee. The stilts and big cone was a small price to pay.

Judy heard a faint 'click' that would have gone unnoticed by other mammals, she located the source of the sound, Nick's phone. When he was interviewed for the promotion to detective he wasn't joking when he said that he was an amateur photographer. Nick smiled happily to himself when he reviewed his masterpiece. His smile faded when he realized a bunny was giving him a death-glare.

"Delete it." She said in a flat, cold tone. Nick gave her a disappointed sigh before pressing 'delete', but not before he saved a copy of it to his backup-folder. He watched as yet another picture was added to his collection that was named 'Blackmailing'. He took a quick glance over his shoulder to check if the coast was clear, Judy was too engrossed in reading his reports that she didn't pay him no mind.

He quickly switched his phone to soundless before taking aim at Judy's intense stare/grimace combo.

'Perfect' He thought to himself.

oooooo

"So what have you and dad been up to?" Carl asked Rose.

"Oh nothing much, there were some squabble over financial reports at my department, took a few days to smooth out." Rose replied in a relaxed tone. Carl carefully leaned forward to pick up his cup of coffee, quilt still wrapped around him. It felt colder in their flat nowadays even though they'd increased the temperature just for Carl's sake. Mostly because he didn't have his winter pelt anymore.

Gently nursing his drink he looked around once more, not much had changed since he left a year ago. The only things being different being the rugs, curtains and lamps. It almost didn't feel real, just a day ago he had been strapped to a chair and… He didn't want to go back to that right now. It felt almost too good.

Saw came back from the kitchen with a batch of freshly baked cinnamon rolls, the gentle steam ascending from the glazed surface smelled strongly of cinnamon. Stretching a paw out to grab one Carl instantly regretted his action.

"Ow." He yelped before blowing on his paw.

"Patience." His mother quipped before stretching over to give Sam a peck on the cheek.

"Har Har." Carl replied while rolling his eyes.

They could all hear the knocks on their front door, Sam motioned for them to remain seated as he himself stood up and walked over to the door, patting Carl on the head in a playful manner on the way over.

Opening the door Sam had to look down because the mammals who had knocked were a bunny and a fox. The bunny stretched out her paw to greet the lynx standing in the doorway.

Smiling, Sam took her much smaller paw in his and gave her a firm shake.

"Oh sorry," Judy said before tapping her badge, "I'm Judy Hopps, i'm with ZPD investigation."

Sam nodded and started fidgeting with his hand, at least that is what it looked like to Nick and Judy.

Nick gave Judy a confused look, "What's going on?" He asked Judy who was just looking at Sam.

Just then another lynx appeared behind the other. She chuckled and then addressed the officers, "Sorry, he likes to joke with people that way, keeps most of the salesmammals away." She smiled apologetically.

Sam nodded before resuming making different shapes and motions with his paws. Rose nodded and turned back to Nick and Judy, "Welcome in, we've just baked cinnamon rolls." She motioned for the two of them to enter.

Judy grabbed the reluctant Nick by his paw and led him in. The inside of the flat was a little warmer than outside in the stairwell. Sam had sat back down in his favorite armchair and was waiting for Rose and the two police officers to sit down as well.

"Hey again!" Carl greeted Nick and Judy as they sat down next to him in the sofa. His face remained neutral although his voice was positive.

"Hello, good to see you're better." Judy told Carl while looking around the room taking in the sights, sounds and smells, it was definitely different from how her home looked and felt back in Bunnyburrows, but she could see how some mammals may prefer this style of living.

"Yeah, thanks I feel-" Carl was cut off when Nick stood up on the couch to reach his ears.

"What's up with your dad?" Nick whispered to Carl that gave him a smirk, "He's mute."

Nick sat back down and looked over to Sam, "Sorry, no offense." Sam smiled and replied with a flurry of gestures and signs.

"He says none taken, most mammals are too shy to ask." Rose translated.

oooooo

"Could we speak to your son in private for a moment please?" Judy asked Sam and Rose, 'of course' they said before leaving and closing the door after them, the insulation in the walls makes every room almost completely soundproof Carl explained.

"Last time we met you were pretty, uh," Judy searched her vocabulary for the right word.

"Pretty high." Nick finished her sentence for her.

Carl scratched the back of his head, "Yeah I think I remember."

"Well," Nick looked over to Judy who had pencil and paper ready, "As you probably figured you were in no condition to be interviewed." He glanced at Judy again, her attention was fully directed to her notepad, ready to scribble down anything noteworthy.

Nick returned his gaze to Carl who was sitting relaxed in the sofa, the quilt wrapped tightly around him, it looked as if it was homemade. "So, can you tell us what happened after we were lured outside."

Carl started retelling how the events had played out, when he came to the part with what he'd done with the radio Judy got an 'aha' moment.

"So that's how we could track you!" Judy said happily, once she processed it all she started laughing. She calmed down a bit and looked Carl in the eyes, "Looks like being stupid pays off sometimes." She chuckled much to Carl's disliking.

"Har Har, look I was panicking, I couldn't think straight." He explained but Judy insisted on her theory of him actually believing he could recreate a stunt in a spy movie. While she was partially correct he'd never admit it.

"Right." She replied in an amused tone, she scribbled something down into her notepad and returned her gaze to the embarrassed lynx. "Radio." She snorted before shaking her head.

Carl rolled his eyes and let out an annoyed groan before pressing on, he told them everything he could about how he'd been taken to an unknown location and strapped to a chair.

"So that large figure was just a mercenary." Judy contemplated for a short moment before adding that to her notepad, "We thought that was a partner in crime, this is progress." She stated with a neutral tone.

"Well, she didn't seem stable, she'd clearly been through a whole lot." Carl explained what he had heard from her, her reason and "end goal".

Judy looked glanced away from them for a short moment while taking it all in.

Nick thought about it too, he'd seen it far too many times as well, good mammals doing horrible things for revenge. He pushed it away, not today.

"She said she was going to start a fire of some sort in city hall to lure a whole lot of firefighters into the building then-" Carl let out a sigh. He never finished his sentence but they knew what would happen.

"To stop that we need to convince Bogo that the vixen's plans are real. And for that I need a witness to tie the cases together." Judy said in a serious voice, her eyes focusing intently on Carl's trying to convey the urgency.

"Of course, what am I supposed to do?" Carl answered .

"We'll have to record a little message to Bogo, this together with the rest of the reports we've filled out has got to be enough to convince buffalo butt." Nick chimed in.

 **A/N: This is fine, ah hope ya enjoy this slightly-better-than-the-last-one-chapter chapter!**

 ***Falls asleep***


	24. High Alert

**A/N: Kapitel tjugo fyra! *Cough* Sorry, I mean Chapter twenty four!**

"Come in." Bogo grunted without looking up from his reports, this was all a big headache. The public was growing increasingly uneasy due to the recent bomb attacks, and to add to all that Officer Hopps and Wilde were trying to convince him to dispatch even more officers to patrol, officers that could be more valuable other work elsewhere.

With a resolute slap Judy had hopped up onto Bogo's desk and dropped a flash drive for him. If looks could talk the one she had would say 'told you so'.

"Here's the report you wanted, we should have some officers ready by tomorrow." Judy said in a triumphant tone. Nick thought it looked unbearably cute, he kept his thoughts for himself though and simply stood by the door with his smug look that he was famous for.

With a surprised look Bogo took the flashdrive and slotted it into his computer, being careful not to accidentally pulverise the little piece of plastic. He looked at Judy and said with a reserved tone, "Don't get ahead of yourself Hopps."

oooooo

"I'll get the door." Carl told his parents as he rolled over to the entrance, with some effort he swung the door open revealing a rather cold looking cheetah. "He welcomed the freezing feline inside who politely accepted.

Although not very warm inside it was at least a bit warmer, the cheetah, who Carl assumed to be Daniel, the nurse his mother had spoken of, took of his thick jacket and hung it on a hang tab. He had a knitted shirt underneath, which was understandable for such a mammal visiting tundratown. Carl himself had come to embrace the warmth that such shirts provided, now that most of his fur had been shaved. It made the whole scene look comical when his mother and father rounded the corner into the hall wearing nothing but t-shirts and shorts.

"Hello Daniel, Once again I must thank you for taking the effort to get over here." Rose said in a gentle tone while shaking Daniel's paw.

"Please Mrs. White, I'll do anything for those who need it." He replied in a humble manner, returning the pawshake.

"Please, Call me Rose." She said in a happy tone before heading towards the kitchen along with Sam. This left Daniel and Carl alone in the hall. Daniel, realizing he hadn't introduced himself to Carl before decided now was as good a time as any.

"Greetings Carl, I'm Daniel, The nurse who will be taking care of you." He said while reaching out a paw to greet Carl. With Carl being in a wheelchair and cheetahs being a lot taller Daniel had to crouch down to actually reach.

"Um, Hello." Carl replied, he looked at the cheetah in front of him, Daniel was a lot taller than Carl with a very slim body that (most) cheetahs are known for. He was wearing a thick knitted sweater and regular jeans, if it weren't for the small ID card clipped to his chest you wouldn't be able to tell he was a nurse.

"Could you show me to your room? I need to examine the injuries and report any changes." Daniel politely requested when he noticed Carl wasn't going to respond any time soon.

Shaking himself from his trance Carl replied a bit embarrassed, "Sorry, I kinda spaced out a bit, it's over here." He pointed towards a door that opened up into a small bedroom. Daniel nodded and took hold of the handles on Carl's wheelchair and gently pushed him towards his room, even though Carl told him that he could to it on his own Daniel insisted.

Carl hopped out of the wheelchair, took two unsteady steps and then sat down onto his bed. He took a deep breath and laid down on his back.

The cheetah retrieved a curious looking object that resembled a lipstick container in shape. "Standard procedure, I need to take a blood sample to make sure that the donated blood isn't being rejected." He stated in a clinical tone. He asked Carl to hold out a digit of his paw.

"This might sting a bit."

oooooo

"Ugh." The groan was long and drawn out, Bogo looked down at his desk at nothing in particular. Both Nick and Judy were sitting on a chair facing the looming figure. Judy was the more excited of the two, although much of that could be contributed to Judy's more outward going nature compared to Nick's more reserved nature.

"Fine." The buffalo finally let out as he looked with tired eyes at Nick and Judy, switching between the two equally.

"Yes!" Judy shouted out before quickly trying to downplay her excited nature, "I mean, good." She tried to look as cold and professional as she possibly could.

For the first time in possibly ever Bogo let out a huff that had a hint at a chuckle. He trained his eyes on Nick with an amused look. Nick answered by giving him a shrug before patting Judy on the shoulder to grab her attention.

Bogo cleared his throat which got both officers to give him their full attention, he mulled over his papers before speaking, "By tomorrow you two along with another patrol will be stationed along the edges of city hall, dismissed." He waved them off before sinking back into his reports and paperwork.

Judy held out her paw to Nick with an expectant look, he sighed and gave her paw a fistbump much to Judy's excitement.

oooooo

"How's the day so far then?" Carla asked before glancing towards the coffee brewer, her supplies had run low, so she was currently on a refueling mission so to speak.

"Well, it's been as usual considering all the random explosions around the city." Houston replied casually, he had tried to keep his mind off of the attacks and his friend being severely injured by focusing on menial tasks such as cleaning and maintaining his equipment. He figured after long enough he just might forget how much of a pickle they were all in.

Carla was just about to answer when the satellite telephone clipped into her belt started ringing, she excused herself before answering, if someone was calling her by satellite it could only be a select few, The brigade manager, The mayor, Bosede, the chief of police or police dispatch.

"ZPFD Station manager Carla here, who is this?" She greeted whoever had called her with an almost robotic voice. Houston didn't know who it was but figured it was serious due to the grimace his superior was currently making.

"We have reasons suspect that an attack on city hall could happen within short notice, I advice you keep your firefighters ready." It was Chief Bogo who was calling, that old buffalo didn't scare her, what did was what he was saying.

"Understood, Keep your mammals ready and i'll keep mine ready." She replied before she ended the call. Slotting the huge phone with multiple antennas back into her belt she gave Houston a worried look.

"What?" He asked dumbfounded.

Sighing she told him that she'd explain it later. She went down the ladder to her desk where she fetched a microphone, pressing a button she spoke up, "All personnel, due to recent events we are now switching to high alert. Stop whatever you're doing and come to the engine hall." She finished before going back up to fetch some much needed coffee, she had some calls to make.

 **A/N: I'm sorry for the short chapters, i've got a temp job coming up and that's stressful. Don't worry, there will still be uploads! And I'm still keeping my schedule I think.**


	25. Calm before the storm

**A/N: Welcome back, this chapter is pretty short.**

"Is everyone here?" Carla asked so that everyone in the engine hall of the ZPFD could hear. She had gathered everyone that was employed at the station.

"I think so." she could hear someone in the back of the crowd call out. She pretended as if she hadn't heard the stupid comment and carried on.

"As you all know there's been a multitude of bombs going off all around zootopia recently." She started explaining while looking out over the crowd, she was answered by most mammals nodding at the statement.

"Until they've caught the terrorist or said anything else this station will be on high alert, which means you stay here." She stomped into the ground to reinforce the point. She was answered by some agreeing with her and some who let out annoyed moans.

Truth be told she'd also like to go home, but that wasn't a top priority, keeping everyone ready for the inevitable attack, as Bogo had explained it, was number one priority. She let out a sigh at the sight of everyone shuffling away back to work.

She turned her look towards her car, it almost felt as if it was collecting dust, as she wasn't out and about as much as she should have been, she had to take care of a lot of the paperwork along with some of the other higher ranking firefighters. Part of her envied the ZPD and their big budget, more money meant more employees, which meant less paperwork for her.

She shook her head and went back to her desk, it would probably be a good idea to let the Chief of police and the mayor know that they were ready.

oooooo

"Here's the change." Nick said as he dumped a paw full of coins into Judy's paw.

"Thanks, I could really use ten cents." She replied sarcastically before dropping the coin into a small plastic bag labeled 'parking'. Nick let out a small huff before handing Judy her cup of coffee, taking a sip Judy had to fight her reflexes who told her to spit it out all over the dashboard.

"Be careful, it's hot." Nick said in an amused tone with a smirk that grew wider as Judy tried to tell him off.

"How can it still be so hot? You left for coffee an hour ago." Judy asked Nick in an annoyed tone, she had sent him to buy coffee while she kept guard from their cruiser that was parked in front of the city hall entrance.

Nick groaned, "You wouldn't believe the queue, it seems people have nothing better to do with their time." He finished and sipped his drink lightly.

"I don't get what you're saying, mine is just warm enough." He commented while spinning his cup around to read the dull and uninteresting facts that were printed onto the cups.

Judy scoffed, "That's because you have milk in yours, you weirdo." She finished the last part with a teasing tone.

Nick took a moment before looking at the bunny in the driver's seat who had "insulted" his taste in coffee. "It's the proper way of enjoying coffee, you uneducated fool." He put on his most snobby accent while holding his head up comically high.

Judy didn't answer but simply smiled back at him, which he returned with a smile of his own. They looked at each other for quite a long time before Judy interrupted it by saying, "if you lean forward just a little bit more you'll have to clean up the car."

Nick realized that he had been slowly leaning towards Judy with his cup still in his paw. He quickly sat back up straight and gazed lazily towards the entrance to the city hall.

Scratching an itch behind his ear he looked towards Judy who were currently blowing the steam that rose from her coffee away in short intervals.

"So how long are we supposed to sit here?"

oooooo

"So how long are we supposed to sit here?" Houston asked the Hyena to his right.

Kenneth looked at Houston, "Until our shift ends or someone needs to leave for the bathroom, whatever comes first." He replied ending the sentence with a short burst of dry laughter before kicking his legs up to rest them on the steering wheel.

Houston was sitting next to him in their assigned truck. After having finished all their maintenance duties they had nothing to do, so they had decided to find the most comfortable place they could to relax in.

"Why not our beds then?" Houston suggested to which Kenneth shook his head, "Knowing Carla she'd flip out if she found us relaxing in bed during our shift.

Through the small windows in the garage doors Houston could see how it grew darker by the second. Engine crew one, which included him, had gotten the night shift.

Kenneth glanced down at his clock and let out a defeated sigh, "only eleven hours left, heh, only." He chuckled at his own bad joke, before looking over to Houston who was growing increasingly restless.

He gave up and smacked his hooves down onto his legs, "I wanna do something." He stated before opening the passenger door and stepping out. Kenneth didn't reply nor care, Houston could do whatever he wanted as long as he didn't destroy anything.

His ears perked curiously at the sound of rattling wheels, he exited the truck to see Houston setting up a pingpong table behind their truck. Houston waved him over and smiled, "Betcha' five I win."

Kenneth grabbed a racket and smiled deviously back at him, "You're on!"

 **A/N: I hate short chapters, sorry, I've got to focus on a job that i've gotten (and will have for a time), don't worry though, I never give up on a project.**


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